the fleshly tables of the heart,' and we all respond to it when it
gathers up all duty into 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and our
consciences say to it, 'Thou speakest well.' The worst man knows it
better than the best man keeps it. Blurred and illegible often, like
the half-defaced inscriptions disinterred from the rubbish mounds that
once were Nineveh or Babylon, that law remains written on the hearts of
all men.

A further point to be well laid to heart is the merciful plainness and
emphasis with which the issues that are suspended on obedience or
disobedience are declared. The solemn alternatives are before every man
that hears. Life or death, blessing or cursing, are held out to him,
and it is for him to elect which shall be realised in his case. Of
course, it may be said that the words 'life' and 'death' are here used
in their merely physical sense, and that the context shows (vs. 17, 18)
that life here means only 'length of days, that thou mayest dwell in
the land.' No doubt that is so, though we can scarcely refuse to see
some glimmer of a deeper conception gleaming through the words, 'He is
thy life,' though it is but a glimmer. We have no space here to enter
upon the question of how far it is now true that obedience brings
material blessings. It was true for Israel, as many a sad experience
that it was a bitter as well as an evil thing to forsake Jehovah was to
show in the future. But though the connection between well-doing and
material gain is not so clear now, it is by no means abrogated, either
for nations or for individuals. Moral and religious law has social and
economic consequences, and though the perplexed distribution of earthly
good and ill often bewilders faith and emboldens scepticism, there
still is visible in human affairs a drift towards recompensing in the
world the righteous and the wicked.