There is no character that is brought before us with such detail in Holy Scripture, and about which we have so few blemishes recorded, as the character of Joshua, the son of Nun.
1. Joshua stands out from the Bible pages as the type of a great soldier, to whom great causes were committed, and by whom great things were done. His work was the conquest and distribution of the Promised Land. In this he showed not only the valour of a warrior, but the justice, gentleness, forbearance, humility, disinterestedness of an exemplary ruler, leading his people to victory, giving to each his inheritance. It was his utter indifference to all selfish considerations and to human opinion, and his complete and constant submission to the revealed will of God, that enabled him triumphantly to accomplish his God-appointed task.
There have been soldiers who were religious in spite of their being soldiers-some of them in their secret hearts regretting the distressing fortune that made the sword their weapon; but there have also been men whose energy in religion and in fighting has supported and strengthened each other. Such men, however, are usually found in times of great moral and spiritual struggle, when the brute force of the world has been mustered in overwhelming mass to crush some religious movement. They have an intense conviction that the movement is of God, and as to the use of the sword, they cannot help themselves; they have no choice, for the instinct of self-defence compels them to draw it. Such were the Ziskas and Procopses of the Bohemian reformation; the Gustavus Adolphuses of the Thirty Years' War; the Cromwells of the Commonwealth, and the General Leslies of the Covenant. Ruled supremely by the fear of God, and convinced of a Divine call to their work, they have communed about it with Him as closely and as truly as the missionary about his preaching or his translating, or the philanthropist about his homes or his rescue agencies. To God's great goodness it has ever been their habit to ascribe their successes; and when an enterprise has failed, the causes of failure have been sought for in the Divine displeasure.1 [Note: W. G. Blaikie The Book of Joshua, 403.]
2. Joshua was the first of an order that seems to many a moral paradox-an enthusiastic fighter, yet a devoted servant of God. His mind ran naturally in the groove of military work. To plan expeditions, to devise methods of attacking, scattering, or annihilating opponents, came naturally to him. Yet along with this the fear of God continually controlled and guided him. He would do nothing deliberately unless he was convinced that it was the will of God. In all his work of slaughter, he believed himself to be fulfilling the righteous purposes of Jehovah. He regarded his enemies as God's enemies, and believed their destruction necessary to keep Israel pure and a distinct race. His life was habitually guided by regard to the unseen. He had no ambition but to serve his God and to serve his country. He believed that God was behind him, and the belief made him fearless. His career of almost unbroken success justified his faith.
Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some “door of hope,” as they would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the great God to have pity on them, to make His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish,-they cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon them,-how could a human soul, by any means at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any more? To them it was as the shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. Was it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that same,-devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. “Hypocrisy”? One begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the truth of a thing at all.1 [Note: Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship.]
3. He met with his reward, the highest that life can yield: he turned many to righteousness. All through his reign we hear of no idolatry, no alliance with the heathen, no counterfeit and private priesthoods, no worship in high places; none of these transgressions which so often challenged God's vengeance in the later history of the race. His personal example and authority had held the traditions of Sinai unbroken, had kept worship and religion pure.
Joshua was strong and wise and true to the great trust committed to his care by the people and by God; and amid the stars that shine in the firmament of heaven, not the least bright and clear is the lustre of Joshua, the son of Nun, who was the antetype of the risen and ascended Saviour, and whose worthiest epitaph, as written by a subsequent hand, is-
Joshua,
The Son of Nun,
The Servant of
Jehovah.1 [Note: F. B. Meyer, Joshua and the Land of Promise, 188.]
Servant of God, well done!
Rest from thy loved employ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter thy Master's joy.
At midnight came the cry,
“To meet thy God prepare!”
He woke,-and caught his Captain's eye;
Then, strong in faith and prayer,
His spirit, with a bound,
Left its encumbering clay;
His tent, at sunrise, on the ground,
A darkened ruin lay.
The pains of death are past,
Labour and sorrow cease;
And life's long warfare closed at last,
His soul is found in peace.2 [Note: James Montgomery.]
