Discourse on the National Crisis. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.—Joshua i, 9th verse. The children of Israel, after a bondage of four hundred years in Egypt, were at length aroused by the fact that God himself had sent them a leader. That leader rescued them from the hand of Pharaoh, led them into the wilderness, and encamped them before Sinai From its summit God gave them a law, and moulded them into a military, national church. Through the wilderness God guided them in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Thirsty, God gave them to drink; hungry, God fed them. Before Amalek God warned them to retire. Before Sihon He charged them to advance. And at last they reached the borders of the Promised Land. But now the messenger of God who had called them from their tedious tasks, and gathered them as a unit on the banks of the Nile—at the pointing of whose finger they had marched onward to the Red Sea—he who was alone thought worthy by God to enter among the thunderings of Sinai—he whose majestic brow was ever in their vanguard—Moses, was no more. Before them swelled and rolled the broad, unbridged, impassable tide of the Jordan, defying their passage into the Promised Land. Beyond it were the walled towns and fastnesses of their valiant enemies. The heaviest of their work to lie done, and their leader gone. Joshua had Ixvn called to the command, and called by God. A man far inferior to Moses ; inferior in that subtle power of mental gravitation which unconsciously draws and binds men
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