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I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, that thou mayest love the Lord thy God and obey his voice, and cleave unto him: for that is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which God sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

The opening Biblical sentences of this long section are very well known to us and very famous. They have become the watchwords of Judaism. 'Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might.' These words put in a nutshell our belief in God, and how, according to our faith, we should feel and act towards him. There is one God: that one God is one: him must we love with all our heart and soul and might: that, as regards God, is the religion of Judaism.

Now as I am not writing either commentary or sermons, I shall not say more about these fundamental words on this occasion. Gradually, as you probably already know, they became more and more important in the eyes of our ancestors, and the Shema (so called from the first Hebrew word of the paragraph, and extending from Hear, O Israel' to 'upon thy gates') has been for many ages the first bit of the Bible which Jewish children have learnt to say and to read, just as it has for many ages formed the confession of faith among all members of the religious brotherhood of Judaism. By the Shema Jews learnt to live, and for the Shema they were prepared to die. If a man heartily accepts the opening words of the Shema, and gives to them the same interpretation which Judaism gives to them, he is not far from the gates of Judaism, though he may call himself by another name than Jew.

'And thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' Can love, it may be asked, be commanded? To be real or worthy, must it not be spontaneous? The answer is that the principles of religion are usually put in the Bible in the form of commands. We should now say the best and highest attitude of man to God is that of love. The Biblical writer said more simply 'Thou shalt love God.' The principle is realizable, and therefore it can be put in the imperative mood.

'With all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy

might.' Would not with all thy heart' be enough? Perhaps it might have been, but the triple phrase increases the emphasis. We are to love God with every faculty and through all the many sides of life. Feeling will not alone suffice; we need also will, and will does not alone suffice, but it must be translated into deed. So for heart and soul and might, we may substitute, with feeling, with will, and with deed. It must above all be a real, inward love; not an outward love of words and symbols and professions and show.

And these words which I command thee shall be upon thy heart.' These words: namely the words from 'Hear, O Israel' down to 'with all thy might.'

Upon thine heart.' Not of course literally, any more than when it says later on 'ye shall lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul,' or where it is elsewhere said of God, 'I will put my teaching in their inward parts and write it in their hearts.' The expression in each case is to be taken metaphorically. The words must not be a mere outward formula, to be learned by heart, and if obeyed at all, obeyed mechanically. We must try to make them the very law of our being, part and parcel of our inmost selves.

Next to trying to make the love of God the loadstar and guiding principle of our lives is put the duty of teaching our religion to our children. For clearly upon our doing this, to the best of our knowledge and ability, the future of Judaism depends. One generation may worship God and love him, but if the next generation be not taught and trained to do so, God, humanly speaking, will be forgotten and the love of him will disappear.

'And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.' These also are metaphorical expressions. You will remember in the law of the Passover how it said: 'And it shall be to thee for a sign upon thine hand, and as frontlets (or tablets) between thine eyes.' The two passages, written if not by the same author, at all events about the same time, must be explained in one and the same way. They are a pictorial way of saying how constant should be our thought, how earnest our observance, of these fundamental commandments. The writer of the Shema is so emphatic and so insistent that he passes from the most inward metaphor he can think of to the most outward, as if he wished to include all the resources of language. The unity and the love of God are to be as perpetually in our minds as if we saw them perpetually written up before our eyes. They are as constantly to determine our motives and our actions as if they had been 'put' or 'graven'

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upon our hearts. You will remember how Queen Mary of England said of her own heart that the word Calais would be found graven upon it. So the Wise Teacher says to his disciples: 'Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the tablet of thine heart.' And again: 'My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the teaching of thy mother. Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck.' And again: Let not love and fidelity forsake thee: bind them about thy neck write them upon the tablet of thy heart.' In later times the Jews took the words of the Shema literally, and many Jews to this day write not only the Shema but three other short passages from the Bible on small scrolls of paper, insert the scroll in little cylindrical capsules, and fix them upon all the doors of their houses. Others bind square capsules at certain times upon their hands and foreheads, but these quaint customs (whether rightly or wrongly is a matter of controversy) are now gradually dying out.

You will have noticed that the Jews are threatened with exile as a mark of God's displeasure and as a method of punishment, whereas their return into their own country is to be a signal of God's grace and of his forgiveness. When these words were written, the Jews were really a nation, like the Dutch or the Danes to-day. During the existence of the great empires of Assyria and Babylon, it was the custom of the despotic rulers of these empires to transport peoples and tribes, which had rebelled against them, or which they had conquered, to distant provinces of the empire, far from their old homes. Could there be a more terrible punishment for a conquered people? Suppose the Emperor of Russia went to war with the tiny kingdom of Denmark. He could conquer it very easily. Fancy now if he transported the Danes to Central Asia. What an awful fate this would be for the unfortunate Danes. A restoration to their own beloved Denmark would seem to them the height of human bliss. If they believed that God had used the Emperor of Russia as an instrument of punishment for their sins, they would regard their restoration to Denmark as the surest mark of the Divine forgiveness. So too with the Jews. They also loved their country as the Danes love theirs, and exile seemed to them the most dreadful fate which could befall them. If that exile were a punishment, then the mark or signal of God's pardon must be restoration. So when the Jews were taken captive to Babylon, they regarded their subsequent restoration to Palestine as the evidence of God's forgiveness. And so indeed it was. But since

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that restoration some 2,430 years have passed away and the condition of the Jews has wholly changed. The Jews are no longer a nation but a religious brotherhood: they form part of many nations, but themselves form none. And if their second exile was once regarded as a punishment, it is, for all Jews who live in Western Europe, America, and Australia, a punishment no more. For you and me to leave our homes in England would not be restoration but exile, not a sign of grace, but a mark of punishment. Moreover, we have now learnt, as you will understand better later on, to measure both God's favour and his displeasure less outwardly than was either advisable or possible in ancient times.

But though the form has changed, the spirit remains. Repentance of sin is still the only way (we may and must most firmly believe) to secure the pardon of God, and if we try to repent and try to be good, God will, as it were, meet us half way. Did you notice that in one place it said, 'make you a new heart and be no more stiffnecked,' and in another place it said, 'God will give thee a new heart in order that thou mayest love God with all thine heart and with all thy soul'? What is there ordered as a command is here promised as a gift. In the Shema it says: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God Here it says God will give a new heart in order that such love may be possible. It is not a real contradiction, though we may not ever be able to solve the puzzle quite correctly, or to adjust to a nicety the respective parts of God and man in human goodness and achievement. We must pray to God to help us, and we may be sure he will, and yet we must also strive to be good and to love God with all our heart, as if both lay wholly within our power.

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'For this commandment is not too difficult for thee, neither is it far off. This commandment' is not the whole collection of laws and statutes referred to in the preceding sentence, but the fundamental bidding to love and reverence and obey God. This 'word' is neither too hard nor too far off. The love of God is, in one sense, as the crown and goal of religion, very hard, but on the other hand it is within the reach of the poorest and the humblest. Above all, no one need be learned or clever to know what it means, or still better to feel what it means. And if you can feel it, you may be said to know it. The veriest clodhopper can love God as deeply as the wisest philosopher. Therefore in this sense the love of God is not too hard. Nor is it far off. For when it has once been clearly put before us, or when we once have heard and read about it in the Bible, we realize that it answers to our own heart's need. It is no strange and conventional and wayward bidding, but one

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that is very near to us; that touches us close and quickens us keenly, and to which we respond in word and thought and deed. Therefore it may be truly said that the love of God is very nigh unto us, in our mouths and in our hearts, that we may do it. To 'do the love of God' seems a strange phrase, but if the phrase is ungrammatical, the meaning is good and real. For it means to live by it, in other words, to let all that we do be in accord with it.

§ 37. Now we come at last to the beautiful story which tells how Moses, his life's work done, passed quietly away, breathing out his soul, as it were, into the care of God.

And God spake unto Moses, saying, Get thee up into this mountain of Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people: because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin: because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. Thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.

And Moses spake unto God, saying, Let the Lord God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation, who may go out before them, and who may come in before them, and who may lead them out, and who may bring them in; that the congregation of God be not as sheep which have no shepherd. And God said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him; and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight. And thou shalt put some of thine honour upon him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient. And Moses did as God commanded him: and he took Joshua, and set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation: and he laid his hands upon him, and gave him a charge, as God commanded by the hand of Moses.

In the Retrospect we hear that Moses besought God, but besought him in vain, to allow him to cross the Jordan. God's