PREFACE
THE best way to vindicate the Bible is to preach it. Each book contains within itself, sometimes in cipher, the autograph of the Holy Spirit. Every page has the water-mark of Heaven. And a patient consideration of the contents of Scripture, as of the book before us, will leave a stronger impression of GOD's authority and authorship than any number of external evidences.
In addition to this, and altogether apart from the spiritual lessons that may be derived from a devout study of Old Testament Scriptures, there accrues to the thoughtful mind an ever-deepening conviction that, instrumentally, they date from the pens of contemporary historians.
It is impossible to believe that a writer, after the return from exile, could have told the story with the vividness, the realism, the minute life-like touches, in which it is presented to us in the historical books of the Old Testament. In the perspective of time, many things that bulk largely to their contemporaries are dismissed as unworthy of notice, whilst general principles are discussed to the ignoring of details. But the reverse of these meets us in every paragraph of that wonderful series of books, of which the story of Joshua is one.
This study, in which the scenes of the conquest of Canaan are narrated again with such help as modern investigation affords, may thus confirm the wavering faith of some. But my main object has been to bring out the wonderful parallels between the story of this Book and the experiences of the Church and the individual Christian parallels so minute and precise as to establish with added force our faith in the Bible as one book, the production of one mind, which "at sundry times and in divers manners" has spoken to men.
In writing this book, I have, amongst other works, read Dean Stanley's "Jewish Church"; "Joshua, His Life and Times," by W. J. Deane; "The Book of Joshua," by H. F. Witherby; "The Fullness of Blessing," by S. F. Smiley; and other smaller books: to all of which I gladly confess my obligations.
F. B. Meyer