And all they that had separated themselves from the people of the lands unto the law of God.
A genuine revival
1. The crucial test of any revival is the extent to which it actually purifies and reforms the lives of those who come under its influence.
2. This is the kind of revival which ever and again we all need. For we are constantly liable to fall below the level of our Christian privileges. We are also apt to grow blind to out” own defects, and to under-estimate the extent of our own shortcomings. We have need to bring our lives into the light of God’s holy law, and into the light of the life of Christ, that our consciences may be awakened to a truer and deeper penitence.
3. A repentance which is the fruit of A true revival of the religious life naturally goes into the details of conduct. (T. Campbell Finlayson.)
And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land.
Marriage and purity
Wherever I find a purely savage life, which means life eaten up by impure sin, there I also find no capacity in the life to advance and grow. You have an instance in the case of Africa, the life of which has not moved for a couple of thousand years, simply because it is soaked with impurity. Turning to the earliest efforts of civilisation, as recorded in the Bible, I find men making effort after effort, getting a little way, and then each effort vanishing in a sink of impure sin. Life ought to grow if natural, but if impurity is natural, it is natural to stagnate, never to grow, to fall to pieces, and for civilisations to be swept out by weakness and impotence. The history of our European civilisation is the history of the gradual rise in the idea of marriage and purity. (Canon Scott-Holland.)