It is the method and the obligation impressed upon us in the text by the great Law Giver of Israel when he was laying the foundation of the Jewish nation. It is instructive to remember that the discourses of Moses recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy are described as having for their first and immediate object to lay down the principles on which the Jewish people could realize the great purpose which God had in view for them, and could become a strong and prosperous nation. “These,” said Moses, in the verses following the text, “are the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: that thou mightest fear the Lord Thy God, to keep all His Statutes and His Commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear, therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily.” And then he proceeds to sum up those statutes and judgments in the momentous words which Our Lord Himself selected as the first and great commandment of the Law, “Hear O Israel,” said Moses, “The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” That, in the words of the book in which our Saviour sought the great principles of His own life, and which He quoted again and again as laying down eternal truths--that is the great principle on which a sound moral, religious, and secure national life must be founded--the principle of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might. The God Whom the people of Israel were thus called on to love with all their heart, soul, and might, was the God Who had delivered them out of Egypt and its bondage, and Who was about to establish them in the land of Canaan by wonders and signs which could only have been wrought by His supreme power, and Who, in the most solemn and awful circumstances, had declared at Mount Sinai the cardinal laws of social and national life. The God to whom our Saviour applies the principle was His Own Father, the God Who is seen in His Own words and in His ministry, Whose will is so graciously explained to us in the records of His life and in the words of His Apostles, and Whose character, therefore, and will are clearly and distinctly revealed. Our Lord, when He adopted these words of Moses, declared to the whole world that in order that they may live, and that it may be well with them, and that they may prolong their days in the peace and happiness He designed for them, the one supreme condition is that they should love the God Who is His Father, with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. If they do that, if the whole of their lives is submitted to His will as revealed by His Son Jesus