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Mount Ebal, we are told, "is a barren, stony, and arid crag"; so would God "smite the apostates with barrenness, hunger, and misery." Gerizim was "covered with luxuriant verdure, streams of running water and cool and shady groves;" so would God "bless the faithful Israelites with abundance, beauty and peace." It is a grand prophecy in landscape of the judgments of God's eternal providence. Henceforth their future, in the country they conquer and colonise, is in their own hands. The two ways of national and individual life, to ruin or to glory, part plainly before their eyes. The things shown in that early age of symbols were only outward patterns of what goes on in facts and decisions within us. Gerizim and Ebal raise their significant and speaking summits before every life.

I. For, in other words, LIFE IS OVERSPREAD, PERMEATED, AND BOUND IN, BY GOD'S LAW. That law occupies every inch of its extent and every fibre of its organisation. Obey and be blessed, disobey and be accursed; here is the sharp alternative imprinted on every department of our being. Your body, your business, your appetites, your affections, your intellect, your memory, your judgment, your imagination, your household manners, your talk at the table and in the street, your practice of your profession or performance at your trade, your levity or sobriety, your temper and your tongue, your bargains and your salutations, your correspondence and your meditation, your action and your reveries, your hands, heart, and brain, all are penetrated and encircled by this law.

II. THIS LAW IS PERMANENT AND UNCHANGEABLE, AS ITS AUTHOR IS, BEING THE UNIFORM WILL OF AN UNCHANGEABLE MIND; not one thing for preachers and communicants, but for persons who never chose to confess themselves Christians another and easier thing; not strict for one seventh of your time and lax for six sevenths; not varying with situations and fluctuating with opportunities for concealment or degrees of temptation; not satisfied to be respected in the dwellings at one end of a city while it is despised in the warehouses and offices at the other end.

III. Again, THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS LAW which we are born and live under, in its two-fold working, whether as visiting penalties upon its violators or peace and strength upon its servants — ARE NOT TO BE PREVENTED THOUGH THEY SHOULD BE APPARENTLY OBSCURED OR POSTPONED. This truth requires something more than a theoretic admission. How many of us realise it — that every offence against the Divine Will is certain to bring on, at last, its penal pain ant: sorrow — even its delay aggravating its torment; that every faithful or religious act or feeling must yield its infallible return of joy — the very hindrance enhancing its richness and depth; that Gerizim is sure of the fulfilment of its promise, and Ebal sure of the execution of its warning?

1. Helps enough are given to enable us to realise it. Can we pretend the law is not made plain?

2. We let our short-sightedness be deceived by the slowness of its operation; and, because sentence against our evil works is not executed speedily, suffer our hearts to get set in us to do evil. But the majestic order of nature is not really so stable as the moral results of moral choice, from greatest to least.

IV. With every right-minded Christian it must be a very earnest and very constant prayer, THAT HE MAY GAIN LARGER AND LARGER APPREHENSIONS OF THE EXTENT AND THE SANCTITY OF THIS LAW — the law that puts him on a perpetual choosing between holiness and worldliness, at between blessing and cursing.

V. Another step in the doctrine is TO TRACE UP THIS COMMANDMENT TO ITS CONSCIOUS AND PERSONAL INFINITE SOURCE. The law has its seat in the heart of God. No rigid, unfeeling abstraction is it, but the living Will of a living Father. Choose the right and scorn the wrong; and there will be growing within you a sense of His Almighty Presence, without whom no right could be, and all would be wrong. But remember that moral obedience can never be religious till it has God for its object, God's Will for its guide, and communion with God for its daily inspiration.

VI. And thus we are led up by this order of our subject to discover, finally, THE POSITIVE GRANDEUR OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE DIVINE LAW. That grandeur is witnessed both by its nature and its effects.

1. In its nature. For obedience to the commandment is of itself a noble and valiant element in character. It is no paradox to affirm that the obedient mind is a commanding mind. The law that carries blessings in its right hand and curses in its left appeals to a deeper principle than selfishness. The blessings are not earthly advantages, but those spiritual gifts and honours, like confidence and holiness, love and faith, power and peace, which exclude all thought of self, and are kindred with the glory and purity of heaven. The curses are those elements of spiritual ruin — fear, hatred, passion, jealousy, despair, which impoverish the whole moral creation. The law does not reveal its encouragements and threatenings from Gerizim and Ebal, to make a rich or famous people, but a holy people.

2. So the effect is holiness of life. The commandment is holy, just, and good; and so must its fruit be.

(Bp. F. D. Huntington.)

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KJV: Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse;

WEB: Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: