It is important, not only to see, but to love, the gradual processes of God. There is more love in doing the little thing than in doing the great thing. A great mind is never so great as when it is throwing itself into something exceedingly minute. The special subject to which the text spiritually and allegorically refers is the conquest of sin. For such as the old inhabitants of the land of Canaan were to Israel, such the old inhabitants of our hearts are to us.
I. The sin of our natural state is the temptation of our converted state, and it is only little by little that it can be driven out.
II. The old sins are conquered little by little (1) because God has His punishments in life: He makes sin scourge sin; (2) because it is for the glory of the Holy Ghost and of His Church that these sins should be left to be gradually overcome; (3) because in our present state we could not bear to be made ail at once perfectly holy.
III. Notice the expression "I will drive them out." It is one of God's high works; it requires the power of Omnipotence to eradicate sin from the human soul.
J. Vaughan, Meditations in Exodus,p. 24.
I. It is through little things that a man destroys his soul; he fails to take note of little things, and they accumulate into great; he relaxes in little things, and thus in time loosens every bond. It is the maxim of one of our nobles, "We perish by what is lawful;" it were an equally correct aphorism, "We perish by what is little."
II. It is by little and little that men become great in piety. We become great in holiness through avoiding little faults and being exact in little duties.
III. There is great difficulty in little things. In daily dangers and duties, in the petty anxieties of common life, in the exercise of righteous principles in trifles in these we must seek and find the opportunity of ejecting "by little and little" the foes we have sworn to expel from our hearts.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2036.
References: Exodus 23:30. J. N. Norton, The King's Ferry Boat,p. 237; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 154.Exodus 24:3-8. J. Hamilton, Works,vol. v., p. 229.