聖書

Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 7:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me; and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings. 5. THE PROPHET AND HIS MINISTRY Amos 7:1-17 - Amos 8:1-4 We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word; we have sought to trace to its source the Word which came to the Man. It now remains for us to follow the Prophet, Man and Word combined, upon his Ministry to the people. For reasons given in a previous chapter, there must always be some doubt as to the actual course of the ministry of Amos before his appearance at Bethel. Most authorities, however, agree that the visions recounted in the beginning of the seventh chapter form the substance of his address at Bethel, which was interrupted by the priest Amaziah. These visions furnish a probable summary of the prophet’s experience up to that point. While they follow the same course, which we trace in the two series of oracles that now precede them in the book, the ideas in them are less elaborate. At the same time it is evident that Amos must have already spoken upon other points than those which he puts into the first three visions. For instance, Amaziah reports to the king that Amos had explicitly predicted the exile of the whole people { Amos 7:11 } -a conviction which, as we have seen, the prophet reached only after some length of experience. It is equally certain that Amos must have already exposed the sins of the people in the light of the Divine righteousness. Some of the sections of the book which deal with this subject appear to have been originally spoken; and it is unnatural to suppose that the prophet announced the chastisements of God without having previously justified these to the consciences of men. If this view be correct, Amos, having preached for some time to Israel concerning the evil state of society, appeared at a great religious festival in Bethel, determined to bring matters to a crisis, and to announce the doom which his preaching threatened and the people’s continued impenitence made inevitable Mark his choice of place and of audience. It was no mere king he aimed at. Nathan had dealt with David, Gad with Solomon, Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel. But Amos sought the people, them with whom resided the real forces and responsibilities of life: the wealth, the social fashions, the treatment of the poor, the spirit of worship, the ideals of religion. And Amos sought the people upon what was not only a great popular occasion, but one on which was arrayed, in all pomp and lavishness, the very system he essayed to overthrow The religion of his time-religion as mere ritual and sacrifice-was what God had sent him to beat down, and he faced it at its headquarters, and upon one of its high days, in the royal and popular sanctuary where it enjoyed at once the patronage of the crown, the lavish gifts of the rich, and the thronged devotion of the multitude. As Savonarola at the Duomo in Florence, as Luther at the Diet of Worms, as our Lord Himself at the feast in Jerusalem, so was Amos at the feast in Bethel. Perhaps he was still more lonely. He speaks nowhere of having made a disciple, and in the sea of faces which turned on him when he spoke, it is probable that he could not welcome a single ally. They were officials, or interested traders, or devotees; he was a foreigner and a wild man, with a word that spared the popular dogma as little as the royal prerogative. Well for him was it that over all those serried ranks of authority, those fanatic crowds, that lavish splendor, another vision commanded his eyes. "I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and He said, Smite." Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israel’s need of punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in chapter 4 he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and earthquake, he selected at Bethel only two-locusts and drought-and he began with the locusts. It may have been either the same visitation as he specifies in chapter 4, or a previous one; for of all the plagues of Palestine locusts have been the most frequent, occurring every six or seven years. "Thus the Lord Jehovah caused me to see: and, behold, a brood of locusts at the beginning of the coming up of the spring crops." In the Syrian year there are practically two tides of verdure: one which starts after the early rains of October and continues through the winter, checked by the cold; and one which comes away with greater force under the influence of the latter rains and more genial airs of spring. Of these it was the later and richer which the locusts had attacked. "And, behold, it was after the king’s mowings." These seem to have been a tribute which the kings of Israel levied on the spring herbage, and which the Roman governors of Syria used annually to impose in the month Nisan. "After the king’s mowings" would be a phrase to mark the time when everybody else might turn to reap their green stuff. It was thus the very crisis of the year when the locusts appeared; the April crops devoured, there was no hope of further fodder till December. Still, the calamity had happened before, and had been survived; a nation so vigorous and wealthy as Israel was under Jeroboam II need not have been frightened to death. But Amos felt it with a conscience. To him it was the beginning of that destruction of his people which the spirit within him knew that their sin had earned. So "it came to pass when" the locusts "had made an end of devouring the verdure of the earth, that I said, Remit, I pray Thee," or "pardon"-a proof that there already weighed on the prophet’s spirit something more awful than loss of grass-"how shall Jacob rise again? for he is little." The prayer was heard. "Jehovah repented for this: It shall not be, said Jehovah." The unnameable "it" must be the same as in the frequent phrase of the first chapter: "I will not turn it back" namely, the final execution of doom on the people’s sin. The reserve with which this is mentioned, both while there is still chance for the people to repent and after it has become irrevocable, is very impressive. The next example which Amos gave at Bethel of his permitted insight into God’s purpose was a great drought. "Thus the Lord Jehovah made. me to see: and, behold, the Lord Jehovah was calling fire irate the quarrel." There was, then, already a quarrel between Jehovah and His people-another sign that the prophet’s moral conviction of Israel’s sin preceded the rise of the events in which he recognized its punishment. "And" the fire "devoureth the Great Deep, yea, it was about to devour the land." Severe drought in Palestine might well be described as fire, even when it was not accompanied by the flame and smoke of those forest and prairie fires which Joel describes as its consequences. { Amos 1:1-15 } But to have the full fear of such a drought, we should need to feel beneath us the curious world which the men of those days felt. To them the earth rested in a great deep, from whose stores all her springs and fountains burst. When these failed it meant that the unfathomed floods below were burnt up. But how fierce the flame that could effect this! And how certainly able to devour next the solid land which rested above the deep-the very "Portion" assigned by God to His people. Again Amos interceded: "Lord Jehovah, I pray Thee forbear: how shall Jacob rise? for he is little." And for the second time Jacob was reprieved. "Jehovah repented for this: It also shall not come to pass, said the Lord Jehovah." We have treated these visions, not as the imagination or prospect of possible disasters, but as insight into the meaning of actual plagues. Such a treatment is justified, not only by the invariable habit of Amos to deal with real facts, but also by the occurrence of these same plagues among the series by which, as we are told, God had already sought to move the people to repentance. The general question of sympathy between such purely physical disasters and the moral evil of a people we may postpone to another chapter, confining ourselves here to the part played in the events by the prophet himself. Surely there is something wonderful in the attitude of this shepherd to the fires and plagues that Nature sweeps upon his land. He is ready for them. And he is ready not only by the general feeling of his time that such things happen of the wrath of God. His sovereign and predictive conscience recognizes them as her ministers. They are sent to punish a people whom she has already condemned. Yet, unlike Elijah, Amos does not summon the drought, nor even welcome its arrival. How far has prophecy traveled since the violent Tishbite! With all his conscience of Israel’s sin, Amos yet prays that their doom may be turned. We have here some evidence of the struggle through which these later prophets passed, before they accepted their awful messages to men. Even Amos, desert-bred and living aloof from Israel, shrank from the judgment which it was his call to publish. For two moments-they would appear to be the only two in his ministry-his heart contended with his conscience, and twice he entreated God to forgive. At Bethel he told the people all this, in order to show how unwillingly he took up his duty against them, and how inevitable he found that duty to be. But still more shall we learn from his tale, if we feel in his words about the smallness of Jacob, not pity only, but sympathy. We shall learn that prophets are never made solely by the bare word of God, but that even the most objective and judicial of them has to earn his title to proclaim judgment by suffering with men the agony of the judgment he proclaims. Never to a people came there a true prophet who had not first prayed for them. To have entreated for men, to have represented them in the highest courts of Being, is to have deserved also supreme judicial rights upon them. And thus it is that our Judge at the Last Day shall be none other than our great Advocate who continually maketh intercession for us. It is prayer, let us repeat, which, while it gives us all power with God, endows us at the same time with moral rights over men. Upon his mission of judgment we shall follow Amos with the greater sympathy that he thus comes forth to it from the mercy-seat and the ministry of intercession. The first two visions which Amos told at Bethel were of disasters in the sphere of nature, but his third lay in the sphere of politics. The two former were, in their completeness at least, averted; and the language Amos used of them seems to imply that he had not even then faced the possibility of a final overthrow. He took for granted Jacob was to rise again: he only feared as to how this should be. But the third vision is so final that the prophet does not even try to intercede. Israel is measured, found wanting, and doomed. Assyria is not named, but is obviously intended; and the fact-that the prophet arrives at certainty with regard to the doom of Israel, just when he thus comes within sight of Assyria, is instructive as to the influence exerted on prophecy by the rise of that empire. "Thus He gave me to see: and, behold, the Lord had taken His station"-‘tis a more solemn word than the "stood" of our versions-"upon a city wall" built to "the plummet, and in His hand a plummet. And Jehovah said unto me, What art thou seeing, Amos?" The question surely betrays some astonishment shown by the prophet at the vision or some difficulty he felt in making it out. He evidently does not feel it at once, as the natural result of his own thinking: it is objective and strange to him; he needs time to see into it. "And I said, A plummet. And the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a plummet in the midst of My people Israel. I will not again pass them over." To set a measuring line or a line with weights attached to any building means to devote it to destruction; but here it is uncertain whether the plummet threatens destruction, or means that Jehovah will at last clearly prove to the prophet the insufferable obliquity of the fabric of the nation’s life, originally set straight by Himself-originally "a wall of a plummet." For God’s judgments are never arbitrary: by a standard we men can read He shows us their necessity. Conscience itself is no mere voice of authority: it is a convincing plummet, and plainly lets us see why we should be punished. But whichever interpretation we choose, the result is the same. "The high places of Israel shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Isaac laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword." A declaration of war! Israel is to be invaded, her dynasty overthrown. Everyone who heard the prophet would know, though he named them not, that the Assyrians were meant. It was apparently at this point that Amos was interrupted by Amaziah. The priest, who was conscious of no spiritual power with which to oppose the prophet, gladly grasped the opportunity afforded him by the mention of the king, and fell back on the invariable resource of a barren and envious sacerdotalism: "He speaketh against Caesar." { John 19:12 } There follows one of the great scenes of history-the scene which, however fast the ages and the languages, the ideals and the deities may change, repeats itself with the same two actors. Priest and Man face each other-Priest with King behind, Man with God-and wage that debate in which the whole warfare and progress of religion consist. But the story is only typical by being real. Many subtle traits of human nature prove that we have here an exact narrative of fact. Take Amaziah’s report to Jeroboam. He gives to the words of the prophet just that exaggeration and innuendo which betray the wily courtier, who knows how to accentuate a general denunciation till it feels like a personal attack. And yet, like every Caiaphas of his tribe, the priest in his exaggerations expresses a deeper meaning than he is conscious of. "Amos"-note how the mere mention of the name without description proves that the prophet was already known in Israel, perhaps was one on whom the authorities had long kept their eye-"Amos hath conspired against thee"-yet God was his only fellow-conspirator!-"in the midst of the house of Israel"-this royal temple at Bethel. "The land is not able to hold his words"-it must burst; yes, but in another sense than thou meanest, O Caiaphas-Amaziah! "For thus hath Amos said, By the sword shall Jeroboam die"-Amos had spoken only of the dynasty, but the twist which Amaziah lends to the words is calculated-"and Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land." This was the one unvarnished spot in the report. Having fortified himself, as little men will do, by his duty to the powers that be, Amaziah dares to turn upon the prophet; and he does so, it is amusing to observe, with that tone of intellectual and moral superiority which it is extraordinary to see some men derive from a merely official station or touch with royalty. "Visionary, begone! Get thee off to the land of Judah; and earn thy bread there, and there play the prophet. But at Bethel"-mark the rising accent of the voice-"thou shalt not again prophesy. The King’s Sanctuary it is, and the House of the Kingdom." With the official mind this is more conclusive than that it is the House of God! In fact the speech of Amaziah justifies the hardest terms which Amos uses of the religion of his day. In all this priest says there is no trace of the spiritual-only fear, pride, and privilege. Divine truth is challenged by human law, and the Word of God silenced in the name of the king. We have here a conception of religion, which is not merely due to the unspiritual character of the priest who utters it, but has its roots in the far back origins of Israel’s religion. The Pagan Semite identified absolutely State and Church; and on that identification was based the religious practice of early Israel. It had many healthy results: it kept religion in touch with public life; order, justice, patriotism, self-sacrifice for the common weal, were devoutly held to be matters of religion. So long, therefore, as the system was inspired by truly spiritual ideals, nothing for those times could be better. But we see in it an almost inevitable tendency to harden to the sheerest officialism. That it was more apt to do so in Israel than in Judah, is intelligible from the origin of the Northern Schism, and the erection of the national sanctuaries from motives of mere statecraft. { 1 Kings 12:26-27 } Erastianism could hardly be more flagrant or more ludicrous in its opposition to true religion than at Bethel. And yet how often have the ludicrousness and the flagrancy been repeated, with far less temptation! Ever since Christianity became a state religion, she that needed least to use the weapons of this world has done so again and again in a thoroughly Pagan fashion. The attempts of Churches by law established, to stamp out by law all religious dissent; or where such attempts were no longer possible, the charges now of fanaticism and now of sordidness and religious shop keeping, which have been so frequently made against dissent by little men who fancied their state connection, or their higher social position to mean an intellectual and moral superiority: the absurd claims which many a minister of religion makes upon the homes and the souls of a parish, by virtue not of his calling in Christ, but of his position as official priest of the parish, -all these are the sins of Amaziah, priest of Bethel. But they are not confined to an established Church. The Amaziahs of dissent are also very many. Wherever the official masters the spiritual; wherever mere dogma or tradition is made the standard of preaching; wherever new doctrine is silenced, or programs of reform condemned, as of late years in Free Churches they have sometimes been, not by spiritual argument, but by the ipse dixit of the dogmatist, or by ecclesiastical rule or expediency, -there you have the same spirit. The dissenter who checks the Word of God in the name of some denominational law or dogma is as Erastian as the churchman who would crush it, like Amaziah, by invoking the state. These things in all the Churches are the beggarly rudiments of Paganism; and religious reform is achieved, as it was that day at Bethel, by the adjuring of officialism. "But Amos answered and said unto Amaziah, No prophet I, nor prophet’s son. But a herdsman I, and a dresser of sycamores; and Jehovah took me from behind the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." On such words we do not comment; we give them homage. The answer of this shepherd to this priest is no mere claim of personal disinterestedness. It is the protest of a new order of prophecy, the charter of a spiritual religion. As we have seen, the "sons of the prophets" were guilds of men who had taken to prophesying because of certain gifts of temper and natural disposition, and they earned their bread by the exercise of these. Among such abstract craftsmen Amos will not be reckoned. He is a prophet, but not of the kind with which his generation was familiar. An ordinary member of society, he has been suddenly called by Jehovah from his civil occupation for a special purpose and by a call which has not necessarily to do with either gifts or a profession. This was something new, not only in itself, but in its consequences upon the general relations of God to men. What we see in this dialogue at Bethel is, therefore, not merely the triumph of a character, however heroic, but rather a step forward and that one of the greatest and most indispensable-in the history of religion. There follows a denunciation of the man who sought to silence this fresh voice of God. "Now therefore hearken to the word of Jehovah thou that sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, nor let drop thy words against the house of Israel; therefore thus saith Jehovah "Thou hast presumed to say; Hear what God will say." Thou hast dared to set thine office and system against His word and purpose. See how they must be swept away. In defiance of its own rules the grammar flings forward to the beginnings of its clauses, each detail of the priest’s estate along with the scene of its desecration. "Thy wife in the city-shall play the harlot; and thy sons and thy daughters by the sword-shall fall; and thy land by the measuring rope-shall be divided; and thou in an unclean land-shalt die. Do not let us blame the prophet for a coarse cruelty in the first of these details. He did not invent it. With all the rest it formed an ordinary consequence of defeat in the warfare of the times-an inevitable item of that general overthrow which, with bitter emphasis, the prophet describes in Amaziah’s own words: "Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land." There is added a vision in line with the three which preceded the priest’s interruption. We are therefore justified in supposing that Amos spoke it also on this occasion, and in taking it as the close of his address at Bethel. "Then the Lord Jehovah gave me to see: and, behold, a basket of Kaits," that is, "summer fruit. And He said, What art thou seeing, Amos? And I said, A basket of Kaits. And Jehovah said unto me, The Kets-the End - has come upon My people Israel. I will not again pass them over." This does not carry the prospect beyond the third vision, but it stamps its finality, and there is therefore added a vivid realization of the result. By four disjointed lamentations, "howls" the prophet calls them, we are made to feel the last shocks of the final collapse, and in the utter end an awful silence. "And the songs of the temple shall be changed into howls in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah. Multitude of corpses! In every place! He hath cast out! Hush!" These then were probably the last words which Amos spoke to Israel. If so, they form a curious echo of what was enforced upon himself, and he may have meant them as such. He was "cast out"; he was "silenced." They might almost be the verbal repetition of the priest’s orders. In any case the silence is appropriate. But Amaziah little knew what power he had given to prophecy the day he forbade it to speak. The gagged prophet began to write; and those accents which, humanly speaking, might have died out with the songs of the temple of Bethel were clothed upon with the immortality of literature. Amos silenced wrote a book-first of prophets to do so-and this is the book we have now to study. Amos 7:14 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: Amos 3:3-8 , Amos 7:14-15 THE MAN AND THE PROPHET THE Book of Amos opens one of the greatest stages in the religious development of mankind. Its originality is due to a few simple ideas, which it propels into religion with an almost unrelieved abruptness. But, like all ideas which ever broke upon the world, these also have flesh and blood behind them. Like every other Reformation this one in Israel began with the conscience and the protest of an individual. Our review of the book has made this plain. We have found in it, not only a personal adventure of a heroic kind, but a progressive series of visions, with some other proofs of a development both of facts and ideas. In short, behind the book there beats a life, and our first duty is to attempt to trace its spiritual history. The attempt is worth the greatest care. "Amos," says a very critical writer, "is one of the most wonderful appearances in the history of the human spirit." 1. THE MAN AND HIS DISCIPLINE Amos 1:1 , Amos 3:3-8 , Amos 7:14-15 When charged at the crisis of his career with being but a hireling-prophet, Amos disclaimed the official name and took his stand upon his work as a man: "No prophet I, nor prophet’s son; but a herdsman and a dresser of sycamores. Jehovah took me from behind the flock." We shall enhance our appreciation of this manhood, and of the new order of prophecy which it asserted, if we look for a little at the soil on which it was so bravely nourished. Six miles south from Bethlehem, as Bethlehem is six from Jerusalem, there rises on the edge of the Judaean plateau, towards the desert, a commanding hill, the ruins on which are still known by the name of Tekoa. In the time of Amos Tekoa was a place without sanctity and almost without tradition. The name suggests that the site may at first have been that of a camp. Its fortification by Rehoboam, and the mission of its wise woman to David, are its only previous appearances in history. Nor had nature been less grudging to it than fame. The men of Tekoa looked out upon a desolate and haggard world. South, west, and north the view is barred by a range of limestone hills, on one of which directly north the grey towers of Jerusalem are hardly to be discerned from the grey mountain lines. Eastward the prospect is still more desolate, but it-is open; the land slopes away for nearly eighteen miles to a depth of four thousand feet. Of this long descent the first step, lying immediately below the hill of Tekoa, is a shelf of stony moorland with the ruins of vineyards. It is the lowest ledge of the settled life of Judaea. The eastern edge drops suddenly by broken rocks to-slopes spotted with bushes of "retem," the broom of the desert, and with patches of poor wheat. From the foot of the slopes the land rolls away in a maze of low hills and shallow dales that flush green in spring, but for the rest of the year are brown with withered grass and, scrub. This is the "Wilderness" or "Pasture-land of Tekoa," { 2 Chronicles 20:20 } across which by night the wild beasts howl, and by day the blackened sites of deserted camps, with the loose cairns that mark the nomads’ graves, reveal a human life almost as vagabond and nameless as that of the beasts. Beyond the rolling land is Jeshimon, or Devastation-a chaos of hills, none of whose ragged crests are tossed as high as the shelf of Tekoa, while their flanks shudder down some further thousands of feet, by crumbling precipices and corries choked with debris, to the coast of the Dead Sea. The northern half of this is visible, bright blue against the red wall of Moab, and. the level top of the wall, broken only by the valley of the Arnon, constitutes the horizon. Except for the blue water-which shines in its gap between the torn hills like a bit of sky through rifted clouds-it is a very dreary world. Yet the sun breaks over it, perhaps all the more gloriously; mists, rising from the sea simmering in its great vat, drape the nakedness of the desert noon; and through the dry desert night the planets ride with a majesty they cannot assume in our more troubled atmospheres. It is also a very empty and a very silent world, yet every stir of life upon it excites, therefore, the greater vigilance, and man’s faculties, relieved from the rush and confusion of events, form the instinct of marking, and reflecting upon, every single phenomenon. And it is a very savage world. Across it all the towers of Jerusalem give the only signal of the spirit, the one token that man has a history. Upon this unmitigated wilderness, where life is reduced to poverty and danger; where nature starves the imagination, but excites the faculties. of perception and curiosity; with the mountain tops and the sunrise in his face, but above all with Jerusalem so near, -Amos did the work which made him a man, heard the voice of God calling him to be a prophet, and gathered those symbols and figures in which his prophet’s message still reaches us with so fresh and so austere an air. Amos was "among the shepherds of Tekoa." The word for "shepherd" is unusual, and means the herdsman of a peculiar breed of desert sheep, still under the same name prized in Arabia for the excellence of their wool. And he was "a dresser of sycamores." The tree, which is not our sycamore, is very easily grown in sandy soil with a little water. It reaches a great height and mass of foliage. The fruit is like a small fig, with a sweet but watery taste, and is eaten only by the poor. Born not of the fresh twigs, but of the trunk and older branches, the sluggish lumps are provoked to ripen by pinching or bruising, which seems to be the literal meaning of the term that Amos uses of himself-"a pincher of sycamores." The sycamore does not grow at so high a level as Tekoa; and this fact, taken along with the limitation of the ministry of Amos to the Northern Kingdom, has been held to prove that he was originally an Ephraimite, a sycamore-dresser, who had migrated and settled down, as the peculiar phrase of the title says, "among the shepherds of Tekoa." We shall presently see, however, that his familiarity with life in Northern Israel may easily have been won in other ways than through citizenship in that kingdom; while the very general nature of the definition, "among the shepherds of Tekoa," does not oblige us to place either him or his sycamores so high as the village itself. The most easterly township of Judea, Tekoa commanded the w, hole of the wilderness beyond, to which indeed it gave its name, "the wilderness of Tekoa." The shepherds of Tekoa were therefore, in all probability, scattered across the whole region down to the oases on the coast of the Dead Sea, which have generally been owned by one or other of the settled communities in the hill-country above, and may at that time have belonged to Tekoa, just as in Crusading times they belonged to the monks of Hebron, or are today cultivated by the Rushaideh Arabs, who pitch their camps not far from Tekoa itself. As you will still find everywhere on the borders of the Syrian desert shepherds nourishing a few fruit-trees round the chief well of their pasture, in order to vary their milk diet, so in some low oasis in the wilderness of Judea Amos cultivated the poorest, but the most easily grown of fruits, the sycamore. All this pushes Amos and his dwarf sheep deeper into the desert, and emphasizes what has been said above, and still remains to be illustrated, of the desert’s influence on his discipline as a men and on his speech as a prophet. We ought to remember that in the same desert another prophet was bred, who was also the pioneer of a new dispensation, and whose ministry, both in its strength and its limitations, is much recalled by the ministry of Amos. John the son of Zacharias "grew and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel." { Luke 1:80 } Here, too, our Lord was "with the wild beasts." { Mark 1:18 } How much Amos had been with them may be seen from many of his metaphors. "The lion roareth, who shall not fear? As when the shepherd rescueth from the mouth of the lion two shinbones or a bit of an ear It shall be as when one is fleeing from a lion and a bear cometh upon him; and he entereth a house, and leaneth ‘his hand on the wall, and a serpent biteth him." As a wool-grower, however, Amos must have had his yearly journeys among the markets of the land; and to such were probably due his opportunities of familiarity with Northern Israel, the originals of his vivid pictures of her town-life, her commerce, and the worship at her great sanctuaries. One hour westward from Tekoa would bring him to the highroad between Hebron and the North, with its troops of pilgrims passing to Beersheba. { Amos 5:5 ; Amos 8:14 } It was but half-an-hour more to the watershed and an open view of the Philistine plain. Bethlehem was only six, Jerusalem twelve, miles from Tekoa. Ten miles farther, across the border of Israel, lay Bethel with its temple, seven miles farther Gilgal, and twenty miles farther still Samaria the capital, in all but two days’ journey from Tekoa. These had markets as well as shrines; their annual festivals would be also great fairs. It is certain that Amos visited them; it is even possible that he went to Damascus, in which the Israelites had at the time their own quarters for trading. By road and market he would meet with men of other lands. Phoenician peddlers, or Canaanites as they were called, came up to buy the homespun for which the housewives of Israel were famed { Proverbs 31:24 }-hard-faced men who were also willing to purchase slaves, and haunted even the battle-fields of their neighbors for this sinister purpose. Men of Moab, at the time subject to Israel; Aramean hostages; Philistines who held the export trade to Egypt, -these Amos must have met and may have talked with; their dialects

O Lord, forgive, I beseech Thee... The Lord repented for this: It shall not be, saith the Lord. Amos 7:1-6 Intercession for pardon prevailing A. Shanks. I. CONCERNING INTERCESSION. 1. This intercession was made by Amos alone. Neither Hosea nor Isaiah, nor any other God-fearers of the time joined in it. To Amos alone the vision appeared, and by him alone the intercession was made. 2. This intercession was made in the behalf of a wicked people. Amos calls them Jacob, but they had renounced the principles of that holy man, and stained their manners with the vilest corruptions. Corruption in manners, the effect of corruption in principles, like a spreading pestilence, infected the whole kingdom. 3. The form of this intercession is a prayer for pardon. Sin is the cause of misery, and misery is the effect and punishment of sin. By pardon sin is taken away, and when the cause is taken away the effect ceases. In going to the throne for deliverance from misery, if we have a true sense of sin, pardon will be our chief concern. 4. This intercession was made in a moment of extremity. In the preceding reigns the kingdom had been mortally wounded, and though under Jeroboam some of its wounds were bound up and healed, others continued bleeding, and terminated in a universal mortification. 5. Importunity in this intercession is tempered with reverence. For the preservation of the house of Israel, the man of God is earnest and fervent in prayer; but his prayer is blended with the reverence that is suitable to Divine majesty and holiness. 6. This intercession is exemplary; an example and pattern to after ages. II. CONCERNING THE PREVAILING OF THIS INTERCESSION. "The Lord repented for this." His meaning is, the Lord accepted his importunity, granted the desire of his heart, and assured him that the miseries, represented under the emblem of the grasshoppers, would not eat up and consume all things. Illustrate the form of words in which this meaning is expressed. 1. The holy writings frequently contain this expression. 2. Changes in the administration of providence, according to the purpose of God, are expressed by these words. 3. These changes of administration encourage intercession, and furnish excitements and motives to repentance. Encouraged by considerations of the grace, mercy, and kindness of the God of Israel, Amos stood and interceded. III. THE SOVEREIGN MANNER IN WHICH THE LORD WAS PLEASED TO EXPRESS AND COMMUNICATE THE PREVAILING OF THE INTERCESSION. "It shall not be, saith the Lord." 1. This intimation came immediately from the Holy One, by whom alone pardon of sin and remission of punishment is granted. 2. This intimation was made by the Saviour of Israel, who alone had power to restrain and countermand the destroyers of Israel. The waster is the creature of His power, and the servant of His providence. 3. The intimation came to the individual who had made intercession. 4. This intimation is effective and sovereign. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." 5. The intimation is solemnly authenticated. Amos heard the words distinctly pronounced, and "saith the Lord," solemnly added by the glorious Speaker. This encouraged him to continue interceding, and raised his hope of prevailing.Inferences. 1. Intercession for a wicked and perverse people is a duty. The Lord allows, requires, and commands it, and in accepting it hath glorified Himself. 2. Supplication for pardon is an essential part of intercession. 3. Through the forbearance and long-suffering of God, some temporal strokes may be mitigated, or removed, upon intercession; while the desolation determined, deserved, and denounced, is making ready and hastening forwards. 4. Intercessors, though friends to their country, are sometimes treated in it as enemies. Toward the restoration of the country Amos contributed more by prayer than Jeroboam did by the sword. A few men who have power with God in prayer are better than chariots of war, and stronger than standing armies. Exhort —(1) Men who are lively and warm in prayer. Do not faint because prayer doth not always prevail, nor because evidences of acceptance are withheld for a time. Men ought always to pray, and never to faint.(2) Men who are cold and spiritless in prayer. Deadness of heart in devotion is one of the distempers of our time.(3) Men who are formalists, who multiply prayers, but never pray from the heart, and with the Spirit. Whatever be your own opinion of these, forms, no petition which is not conceived and uttered by the Spirit, and offered in the name of Christ, comes into His censer, nor goes up before the throne with acceptance.(4) Men who neglect prayer. Such are enemies to themselves, to their country, to their king, and to their God. ( A. Shanks. ) Revelation and prayer Homilist. I. A DIVINE REVELATION LEADING TO HUMAN PRAYER. 1. A Divine revelation. A vision of judgments symbolically represented to the mind of the prophet. Destruction by grasshoppers. Destruction by fire. 2. A human prayer. "Forgive." This calamity is brought on by the sin of the nation. Forgive the sin; remove the moral cause of the judgment. "By whom shall Jacob arise?" Or, better, "How can Jacob stand? for he is small." Jacob's — the nation's — weakness, is the plea of the prayer for forgiveness. The Israelites had been greatly reduced by repeated invasions on the part of the Assyrian kings, and were now on the point of being attacked by the Assyrians, but purchased their retreat by one thousand talents of silver ( 2 Kings 15:19, 20 ). The nation was now so weakened that it was unable to stand before another invader. How can Jacob stand? The time has come when men may well ask this question in relation to the Church. By whom shall it arise? Not by statesmen, scientists, etc. II. HUMAN PRAYER LEADING TO A DIVINE REVELATION. The prophet prays, and the great God makes a new revelation of mercy. "The Lord repented for this: It shall not be, saith the Lord." ( Homilist. ) By whom shall Jacob arise? Amos 7:2 The duty of Christians towards the Jews David Roberts, D. D. : — These words were used as a plea for Israel before God, and proved successful. 1. Jacob is fallen. And great was his fall. He stood higher than any other on the face of the earth. He was nearer to God than any other people were. Jacob, among the nations of the earth, was to God what Joseph was to his father among his brethren: the chiefest blessings invariably fell to his lot. "To whom pertaineth the adoption." The Jews as a nation were adopted by God into His family. And a dear son was Ephraim to God for a long-period. Alas, that we are now compelled to say of this once exalted people, Thou art fallen"! Many a downfall did Jacob experience " because of his iniquity." He descended into the land of Egypt. God raised him thence "with a stretched-out arm and great judgments." He again fell into Babylon, and once more did God graciously lift him out, and place him upon his feet; but of all his falls, this, the last, is the deepest and the heaviest. Hitherto he had but fallen backwards, as it were. This time he fell prostrate on his face. In all his former falls he had contrived to keep his hold of many promises, blessings, privileges. On this occasion he lost his grasp of all, — he is "without a king, and without a prince, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." He descended lower than did any nation, so that all look down now upon the Jew. 2. Jacob is unable to arise. Every movement he makes sinks him lower in the mire. Does he renounce the Talmud? It is but to embrace infidelity. No one has fallen among such cruel thieves as Jacob, and it is hard to pass by him continually, as the priest and Levite are said to have done. Extend a helping hand to Jacob. 3. Jacob is worth raising. True, Jacob has received a great fall, but the pit into which he descended is not bottomless. The grace of God is deeper than the fall of the Jew. The Christian Church has long acted towards the Jew as if it thought he was not fit to be raised. Our hearts appear to have been more tender to all than to the poor Jew. But Jacob is not so foul as that the blood of the Cross cannot cleanse him. 4. Jacob is to be raised. What a multitude of things there are that are worth raising, but of whose restitution we have no certainty. It may be questionable whether Jacob will again be restored to his own country, but there is not the shadow of a doubt as to his being raised into the Divine favour. It is by the instrumentality of the Gentiles that Jacob's restoration is to be accomplished. One great reason for extending the Gospel to us was that we might reach it to others, and "to the Jew first." 5. There is a large reward for raising Jacob. Once the Jews are brought to believe, the lever that is to move the whole world will have been obtained. The Jew is a wanderer in every land; he is found under the burning sun of Hindoostan, and among the eternal snows of Siberia; he can speak every tongue, so that, without any educational preparation, he is ready to preach the Gospel of Christ unto all the nations of the earth. ( David Roberts, D. D. ) Help for Jacob J. Cross, D. D. The chosen people are in trouble and distress. They have forsaken the living God, and He is punishing their apostasy. But the prophet of the Lord, and the few faithful among his brethren deeply deplore the national sin, and earnestly invoke the Divine mercy. They will not rest, they cannot hold their peace till God pardon the iniquity of His people, and restore to them the tokens of His loving-kindness. At such a time how natural and significant the language of Amos. Often in the Church of Christ are there not seasons of declension, lukewarmness, discouragement, inefficiency, fightings without, and fears within, bitter partisanship, and uncharitable controversy, when all hands are feeble, and all hearts arc faint? And thus afflicted, what need we so much to know as our spiritual poverty and feebleness, and what so much to learn as the sufficiency of our Divine resources? I. JACOB IS SMALL. 1. In numbers. 2. In substance. 3. In influence. 4. In religious knowledge. 5. In fruitfulness and efficiency. II. BY WHOM SHALL JACOB ARISE? His helplessness conceded, who shall help him? Shall the civil ruler? Or the wealthy patron? Or by the popular orator? Or by the speculative theorist? Or by the partisan controversial st? Or by the sensational enthusiast? Nay, Jehovah-Jesus is our strength and salvation. The cause is His, and with Him is the residue of the Spirit. Year not for the future of the Church. God shall help her, and that right early. To the full extent of her necessity His plenipotence is hers. ( J. Cross, D. D. ) The true Helper of the Church E. D. Griffin, D. D. This was an appeal to the heart of God at a time when the judgments of heaven were bringing the chosen people to ruin. This is a question which might well have been asked in every age which the Church has yet seen. Her numbers have always been small in comparison with the ranks of the wicked. The Church, to this day, is but a drop in the ocean. And she is weak as well as small. When we look abroad over the world we behold a race of men dead in trespasses and sins, given over to the dominion of the selfish passions, chained down in ignominious servitude to the world; whom no motives can conquer, no means reclaim. To form such beings into materials for building up the Church, they must be made to undergo a thorough and wonderful transformation. Who shall accomplish this mighty change? The transformation must not only be begun, it must be continued and perfected. After men are set out on the heavenly course, they still have to contend with their original corruptions, and with a world full of objects fitted to inflame them. All these corruptions and temptations stand in the way of the growth of the Church. And the Church as a body has to contend with a world in arms. Every natural man is a foe. The whole bent of the natural heart in every age and country, in every family and individual, is against it. Leave man to himself for a single generation, and with all the means of civilisation and grace, the Church would become extinct. Our strength is wholly incompetent to preserve the Church a single hour, to add one to the number of her sons, to produce a single impression on a single heart. If no other helper is found we must sit down in tears, and give up all for lost. The Church is God's interest. This interest God has not committed to men; it is His own, His only portion. He has taken it into His own hands. The great end which He purposes to Himself in all His works is to bring out to view the riches of His nature, that creatures may see and acknowledge Him as He is, and for ever enjoy Him. It is the natural course of unbelief to put Him out of view. God is resolved to be acknowledged as the sole author and finisher of the whole. For this reason He studiously constructs the dispensations of His grace in a way to convince His people that it is " not by might nor by power, but by "His Spirit that the Church is enlarged. Then our hope is only in God. Let all other dependencies be given up; the Church must rise by God alone. This is our consolation in the darkest times. ( E. D. Griffin, D. D. ) How to have a revival Homiletic Monthly. 1. The first step is humiliation. 2. The second step is reformation. 3. The third step lies in the direction of religious duty. The path of duty must be again frequented. The cross must once more be carried. Duty must become, what it once was, the paramount consideration. 4. The spirit of prayer must be sought and exercised till the blessing comes. ( Homiletic Monthly. ) Jacob crippled E. D. Green. I. A SAD CONFESSION. "Jacob is small." If none but those who have been redeemed from a low life of flesh-love to a higher one of holiness may be classed under this term to-day, then is Jacob small. 1. Numerically. 2. In worldly esteem. 3. In material resources. 4. In political power.And alas! Jacob is small spiritually, in personal power. Faith, hope, and charity are small, so is our self-denial. All this diminutiveness comes as the result of being prostrate, down, low. For Jacob to be prostrate is a great reproach indeed. Jacob is, in too many cases, a self-made cripple. (1) Unbelief has crippled him. (2) So has sectarianism. (3) So has inactivity. (4) So has a stinting selfishness. (5) So have internal bickerings. (6) So has a dreary spirit of timidity. (7) And ceremonialism stunts Jacob. (8) Restrictionalism has almost strangled Jacob. II. AN ANXIOUS INQUIRY. "By whom," etc. That he ought to arise is generally admitted. 1. Not by monarch's smile. 2. Not by decrees of State. 3. Not by the addition of a few more men of means. 4. Not by a larger supply of education and literature. 5. Not by increasing the number of our sanctuaries.What is needed is heaven's force and life. "By My Spirit." The Holy Ghost is Jacob's blessed Strength, Guardian, and Helper.(1) By convincing men of their own personal sin, and showing the Church's real worth, the Spirit prepares the way for Jacob's growth.(2) By the Divine Spirit regenerating men, and adding them to the Church. The healthier torte a Church has, the stronger will her offspring be.(3) By the richer adornment of Christian men with the sweet graces of a higher life, so that their rare moral beauty may arrest, and even charm the "enemy without the gate." How can we aid this lifting? This dignity is not the privilege of officers only. Every member of the rank and file counts for one. Manifold are the ways in which this end may be reached. Make commercial life brighter and sounder, and home life sweeter. Let life be readier spent and lost in others' need. Let the sense of stewardship for God be more than a sentiment. ( E. D. Green. ) The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in His hand. Amos 7:7, 8 God in relation to human work Homilist. All men are workers, the world is "full of labour." The words suggest two facts in relation to it. I. God has a COMMANDING VIEW OF IT. "He stands upon the wall" high up, so that every portion comes within His glance. He observes — 1. Its quality, good or bad. 2. Its variety, overt or occult. 3. Its influence, useful or pernicious.Solemn thought, that God's eye is on us in all our activities, and that the most, secret act eludes not His glance. II. God TESTS THE CHARACTER OF IT. "A plumbline in His hand." The mason uses the "plumbline" to determine the straightness of the wall, and thus God tests the character of human actions. What is God's "plumbline"? 1. His law as inscribed upon the human conscience. By this He tries all men, heathen, etc. 2. God's law as written in the Scriptures. By this He tries all who possess the revelation. 3. God's law as embodied in Christ. By this He tries all who have the Gospel. ( Homilist. ) Man's moral character Homilist. I. There is a KIND OF MASONRY IN THE FORMATION of man's character. Man's character may be compared to masonry in several respects. 1. It has one foundation. Walls are built, not upon two, but upon one foundation. So is every man's character. There is some one principle on which it is organised. That principle is the paramount affection of the man. Whatever he loves most, governs him. If he loves pleasure most, his character is sensual; if he loves money most, his character is worldly. If he loves wisdom most, his character is philosophic; if he loves God most, his character is Divine, etc. 2. It has a variety of materials. In a building there are earth, lime, stones, bricks, wood, iron, etc. etc. These are brought together into a whole. Character is not formed of one set of actions, thoughts, impulses, volitions. All kinds of acts enter into it, mental, moral, muscular, personal, political, religious — all are materials in the building. 3. It is a gradual advancement. II. There is a DIVINE STANDARD BY WHICH TO TEST MAN'S CHARACTER. What is the Divine "plumbline" by which to test character? Here it is. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." Or, perhaps more intelligibly, the moral character of Christ. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." III. There is a TERRIBLE RUIN for those whose characters will not bear the test of this plumbline. "Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of My people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more: and the high places of Israel shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword" ( Matthew 25:31-46 ). ( Homilist. ) A test for uprightness J. Reid Howatt. Italy is a land of volcanoes, and earthquakes, and other shaking things of the sort, so that it is not easy to build tall and slender towers and yet keep them true to the plummet: There comes a shake, or the foundation yields a little, and the towers tilts — like the leaning tower of Pisa, and the two leaning towers of Turin. It is natural then that builders who have taken pains to do their work thoroughly should seek for some way to "prove" it, so as to show that what they have done is both upright and downright. The builders of the cathedral in Florence took a very ingenious way of proving tiffs. High up, in the centre of that beautiful building, is a lofty dome, like that of St. Paul's, with stained windows all round. On the casement of one of these windows is a small iron ring, and it is by this the uprightness of the tower is tested every year. For, on a certain day in June, at a certain hour, the sun shines through that ring, and its light falls on a brass plate let into the marble floor far beneath. So long as the sunbeam falls on a spot there, on that day and at that moment, it proves that the building is as erect as on the day it was finished; if it had tilted over so little to the one side or the other, that long ray of light would have proved it, for then it could not have fallen exactly on. the right spot. ( J. Reid Howatt. ) What seest thou? And I said, A plumbline Straight up and down religion T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. Bricklayers, and stone masons, and carpenters, in the building of walls, use an instrument made of a cord, at the end of which a lump of lead is fastened. They drop it over the side of the wall, and, as the plummet naturally seeks the centre of gravity in the earth, the workman discovers where the wall recedes and where it bulges out, and just what is the perpendicular. Our text represents God as standing on the wall of character, which the Israelites had built, and in that way testing it. What the world wants is a straight up and down religion. Much of the so-called piety of the day tends this way and that to suit the times. We have all been building a wall of character, and it is glaringly imperfect, and needs reconstruction. How shall it be brought into perpendicular? Only by the Divine measurement. The whole tendency of the times is to make us act by the standard of what others do. There are ten thousand plumblines in use, but only one is true and exact, and that is the line of God's eternal righteousness. Nothing would make times so good, and the earning a livelihood so easy, as the universal adoption of the law of right. Suspicion strikes through all bargain-making. In the same way we need to measure our theologies. All sorts of religions are putting forth their pretensions. All religions but one begin at the wrong end, and in the wrong place. The Bible religion demands that we first get right with God My text gives me a grand opportunity of saying a useful word to all young men who are now forming habits for a lifetime. A young man is in danger of getting a defect in his wall of character that may never be corrected. Oh, this plumbline of the everlasting right! God will throw it over all our lives to show us our moral deflections. ( T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. ) The plumbline David Davies. Builders could not build our houses as they ought without a plumbline. Israel had been built up as a people, so to speak, with a plumbline; everything was right; God approved of them. But now Israel had become a very different people from what they were at the beginning. Very early Jeroboam began to introduce calf worship. The people thus became very wicked, and departed from the way of the Lord more and more. Amos went to warn Jeroboam the Second. But all his warnings were in vain. Amaziah the high priest told him to go away, for they did not want his services there. God comforted Amos by showing him a plumbline, and in effect saying, "I have noticed how Israel, like a wall which was once upright, has been gradually giving way, and yet I have passed it by, but I cannot do so any more." This is what God says at last to every kingdom or nation that ceases to be upright and true. How many nations there have been that have begun fairly, but have got worse as time passed by! God is always with His plumbline trying our lives. What is His plumbline? The grand old Book. By this, too, we ought all to be trying ourselves. You are building up a life. Every thought you cherish, every word you utter, and every deed you perform is the building up of character and life. Bricklayers are not foolish enough to think that if they build a wall out of perpendicular it Will stand. If a man will grow up crooked, or dishonest, or untruthful, he is bound to come down sooner or later. If Jesus comes to us, He is sure to find something or other in our character that is not right, and very likely He will find a good many bulging defects. It may be selfishness, untruthfulness, unkindness, or some other sin. We must build up our life according to His law. We cannot do anything ourselves without His help; but that help He is ever ready to give. ( David Davies. ) Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel. Amos 7:10-17 The conventional and the genuine priests of a people Homilist. I. THE CONVENTIONAL PRIEST. Amaziah was chief priest of the royal sanctuary of the calves at Bethel. 1. He was in close intimacy with the king. 2. He seeks to expel an independent teacher from the dominion of the king.(1) By appeal to the king. By bringing against Amos the groundless charge of treason. By a base slander he endeavours to influence the king against the true teacher. He does this —(2) By alarming the prophet. Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court." It does not appear that the king took any notice of the message which this authorised religious teacher had sent him concerning Amos; hence, in order to carry out his malignant purpose, he addresses the prophet and says, "O thou seer, go, flee thee away." Not imagining that Amos could be actuated by any higher principle than that of selfishness, which reigned in his own heart, the priest advised him to consult his safety by fleeing across the frontier into the kingdom of Judah, where he might obtain his livelihood by the unrestrained exercise of his prophetical gifts. Thank God, the days of the Amaziahs, through the advancement of popular intelligence, are drawing to a close! II. Here we have the GENUINE priest of a people. Amos seems to have been a prophet not nationally recognised as such. 1. He is not ashamed of his humble origin. "I was no prophet," that is, I am not a prophet by profession, "neither was I a prophet's son." By the son of a prophet he means a disciple or pupil. He had not studied in any prophetic college. No true prophet is ever ashamed of his origin, however humble. As a rule the greatest teachers of the world have struggled up from the regions of poverty and obscurity. 2. He is conscious of the Divinity of his mission. "The Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." Amos seems to have had no doubt at all as to the fact that the Lord called him. How he was called does not appear. When God calls a man to work, the man knows it. No argument will convince him to the contrary. 3. In the name of heaven he denounces the conventional priest. In return for this rebellion against Jehovah, Amos foretells for the priest the punishment which will fall upon him when the judgment shall come upon Israel, meeting his words, "Thou sayest, Thou shalt not prophesy" with the keen retort, "Thus saith Jehovah." The punishment is described in verse 17. ( Homilist. ) The Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel. Amos 7:15 The messenger faithful to his mission W. M. Hay-Aitken, M. A. : — Holy Scripture seldom teaches more impressively than when it teaches by contrasts. There may be instituted a contrast between two classes of religious workers. 1. Professional religious workers. In every age there have been such men — conventional religionists, whose creed is compromise, and whose maxim is, "Sail with the stream." 2. Men whose hearts the Lord has touched. Such was Amos. Observe the surroundings of his life. What Was it the mere professionals were afraid of in his message? They may have feared lest the people should be roused to think. More probably they felt the inward uneasiness which hollow profession must ever experience when brought into contrast with genuine piety and the power of the Holy Ghost. The presence and testimony of Amos condemned them. The priest Amaziah suggested that Amos would be wise to flee away to the land of Judah. There would have been nothing necessarily sinful in following this advice. The presence of the prophet in Jerusalem would have been hailed with the warmest sympathy and welcome. He would have gained a wide popularity, and would have been an object of general admiration. And we are all liable to be influenced by such motives. We do not like to stand alone, beset with continual difficulties arising from our position. No doubt Amos would have yielded had he not been walking in the Spirit, and it is only this that will keep an.y of us at the post of duty. We are often tempted to run away from the cross given us to bear, flattering ourselves all the time that in doing so we are seeking opportunities of greater usefulness. We cannot get away from the Cross; it is the law of true Christian experience. Satan will always entice us to run away. Consider the temptations of the prophet more in detail. 1. Immunity from danger is promised. Amos was in a state of continual danger where he was. 2. If Amos would only go across the border, he had a clear prospect of obtaining what none of us can do without — bread. He might count upon a comfortable maintenance, a good living. A judicious use of his religion would have got him on in the world, and his godliness might have been made the steppingstone to rank and fortune. The position of Amos where he was must have been very precarious; he had left his regular means of livelihood, and was living a life of faith. He must have been living, as we say, "from hand to mouth." To stay where he was would be to continue in poverty, perhaps to starve. 3. There was something more than even bread. Which of us does not know the yearning of the human heart for sympathy? How painful it is to stand alone! Which of us is altogether indifferent to popularity? 4. Even this was not all. The temptation is backed by an attempt to get up a question of casuistry. The king has commanded you not to speak, and you are disobeying him. How dare you arrogate to yourself such airs of superiority, and set yourself up as better than every one else? This is one of the severest trials of the Christian life. It does seem to those who do not take pains to find out the truth, as if we assumed an attitude of religious superiority. But, after all, our position is not as trying as Amos's was. Our only safety is .ever to put our direct duty to God before our indirect. Be loyal to Him-personally, first; be loyal to Him indirectly, through your king or your parent, second; and remember you cannot be loyal to Him indirectly, when you have ceased to be loyal to Him directly. Against all these considerations of expediency and self-interest what had Amos to set? Only one mighty word from the lips of God. It was this that kept him at his post. "Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." That was all; but it was clear. The voice said, "Amos, go!" From that moment Amos lived for God and His work; he turned his back on the sheepfold, gave up the gathering of sycamore, and began to deliver his message. Everything seemed to wave him back to his primitive seclusion. But against all opposition rang out the clear inner voice, "Amos, go; have not I sent thee?" And he went, with his life in his hand. He went, in the face of the jeers, and scoffs, and threats of the world, and the advice of such religious professors as Amaziah. We do not want two-faced Christians. We want men who, like Amos, are carried forward by the mighty consciousness of the Divine call, men in whom inmost heart the mighty, some of God is heard, calling them as by name, and bidding them Go. ( W. M. Hay-Aitken, M. A. ) A humble origin remembered Felix Faure, the late president of the French Republic, never sought to conceal his lowly origin. Hanging in a conspicuous place on the wall of his presidential office was a photograph of a young man wearing a tanner's blouse and wooden shoes. Faure the president, did not forget that he was once Faure the currier.

7:1-9 God bears long, but he will not bear always with a provoking people. The remembrance of the mercies we formerly received, like the produce of the earth of the former growth, should make us submissive to the will of God, when we meet with disappointments in the latter growth. The Lord has many ways of humbling a sinful nation. Whatever trouble we are under, we should be most earnest with God for the forgiveness of sin. Sin will soon make a great people small. What will become of Israel, if the hand that should raise him be stretched out against him? See the power of prayer. See what a blessing praying people are to a land. See how ready, how swift God is to show mercy; how he waits to be gracious. Israel was a wall, a strong wall, which God himself reared as a defence to his sanctuary. The Lord now seems to stand upon this wall. He measures it; it appears to be a bowing, bulging wall. Thus God would bring the people of Israel to the trial, would discover their wickedness; and the time will come, when those who have been spared often, shall be spared no longer. But the Lord still calls Israel his people. The repeated prayer and success of the prophet should lead us to seek the Saviour. 7:10-17 It is no new thing for the accusers of the brethren, to misrepresent them as enemies to the king and kingdom, as traitors to their prince, and troublers of the land, when they are the best friends to both. Those who make gain their godliness, and are governed by the hopes of wealth and preferment, are ready to think these the most powerful motives with others also. But those who have a warrant from God, like Amos, ought not to fear the face of man. If God, that sent him, had not strengthened him, he could not thus have set his face as a flint. The Lord often chooses the weak and foolish things of the world to confound the wise and mighty. But no fervent prayers, or self-denying labours, can bring proud sinners to bear faithful reproofs and warnings. And all who oppose or despise the Divine word, must expect fatal effects to their souls, unless they repent.