Joshua 6:20

the wall fell down flat No hand of man interposed to bring about this catastrophe, no merely natural causes precipitated the fall; "by faith," as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews declares, "the walls of Jericho fell down" (Hebrews 11:30). "When we examine the operation of faith in this instance, we shall see the point of the example to be in the refraining from action at the bidding of God. The impulse of nature was to attack the city; to try upon its bulwarks the skill of military science, as then understood, as by them possessed. The power of faith was shown in curbing that impulse; in submitting to an unexplained, unintelligible, severely trying, edict of inactivity; nay in consenting to play what must have seemed a ridiculous part, in the face of a warlike and disciplined host, waiting to see what this intrusive, this presumptuous horde of rovers had to say for itself." To escort the Ark, "day after day for a whole week, round and round the ramparts of Jericho, crowded doubtless with armed spectators; to do this with a ceremonial which could be imposing only to themselves which must have been not so much mysterious as ludicrous to the established ideas of the world, and even to those -thoughts of the heart" which are busy in all of us, and which are the peculiar property neither of Jew nor Greek must have taxed to the uttermost farthing the loyalty, the religion, and the moral courage of Israel; we can scarcely explain it otherwise than by saying that it was -by faith," in other words, that their apprehension of the invisible rose above the counteracting influences of the present, and enabled them to say within themselves, -We ought to obey God rather than man." " Dr Vaughan's Heroes of Faith, p. 257.