The Danites sought them an inheritance .... They set them up Micah's graven image. Judges 18 The image-worship expanding into tribal idolatry J. P. Millar. I. THE STRAITS TO WHICH UNBELIEF REDUCES THE STRONG (ver. 1). II. DISCONTENT WITH A DIVINELY-MARKED LOT LEADS TO EVIL (ver. 2). III. TRIFLING CIRCUMSTANCES OFTEN LEAD TO THE DISCOVERY OF SINFUL SCHEMES (ver. 3). IV. SILENT NEGLECT AT FIRST, LEADS AFTERWARDS TO OPEN REJECTION OF GOD'S ORDINANCES (ver. 5). V. THE MOST INOFFENSIVE PEOPLE ARE NOT SAFE FROM THE ATTACKS OF EVIL MEN (vers. 7, 9, 10). VI. RELIGION IS SOMETIMES INVOKED TO AID THE PLOTS OF THE UNGODLY (ver. 5). VII. INDIRECTNESS IS A CHARACTER OF THE WORLD'S COUNSEL (ver. 6). VIII. FALSE WORSHIPPERS TAKE REFUGE IN IMITATING THE APPEARANCES OF THE TRUE (vers. 14, 17). IX. DIVINE PROVIDENCE OFTEN OFFERS NO INTERRUPTION TO THE EXECUTION OF THE DESIGNS OF THE WICKED. X. THE SUDDEN DESTRUCTION OF THE MAN-MADE RELIGION (vers. 15-20). XI. PRAYER WILL NOT SECURE THE DIVINE BLESSING ON A WRONG ACTION (vers. 5, 6, also vers. 18, 19). XII. WORLDLY MINDS CARE LITTLE FOR ACCURACY IN SPIRITUAL THINGS (vers. 17-19). XIII. NEITHER MORAL PRINCIPLE NOR SOUND REASON CAN BE EXPECTED OF THOSE WHO DENY TO GOD HIS NATURAL RIGHTS. XIV. SUCCESS IN EVIL IS NO PROOF OF THE DIVINE APPROVAL. XV. TRUE SERVICE IS NOT TO BE EXPECTED FROM A FALSE PRIEST (ver. 20). XVI. THE EXCESSIVE IMPORTANCE WHICH AN IDOLATER ATTACHES TO HIS GODS (ver. 24). ( J. P. Millar. ) Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God Counsel of God J. Burns, D. D. Seeking counsel of God is the first duty of Christian men. I. WHY WE SHOULD ASK. 1. On account of our ignorance and short-sightedness. The way before us dark, uncertain. So reason would suggest to ask, etc. it is the course God's people have ever adopted. See Jacob at Bethel ( Genesis 27:20 ); Moses ( Exodus 33:12 ); David ( 2 Samuel 7:29 ). 2. On account of God's ability to give. He knows all the way before us. 3. On account of the fact that our best interests are involved in the counsel God can give. It is like the pillar and cloud, the compass of the mariner, light of day, etc. II. WHAT WE MAY ASK. 1. As to our temporal concerns. Duties in the world, engagements, plans, and changes. 2. As to our relative concerns. Families, children, friends, etc. So Abraham and David; so all the truly pious. 3. As to our spiritual concerns. The way of experimental piety, usefulness, etc. Influence for good. The text speaks of the "way being prosperous." III. How WE MUST ASK. 1. With a deep conviction of our exigency. Not self-sufficient. 2. With believing confidence. The promises are abundant for every scene. To lead, direct, keep, deliver, strengthen, protect, sanctify, save; hence we must calmly look and plead. 3. With a resolution to follow the counsel. 4. Through the person and advocacy of Christ. ( J. Burns, D. D. ) We have seen the land, and behold, it is very good Report from the promised land W. T. Sabine. This was a model report, because it urged the brethren to take advantage of an opportunity that meant benefit to themselves. The believer in Jesus Christ is an explorer, and he brings back a report to his brethren who are unbelievers. Religion, like science, to be exact, must be grounded in truth and fact. We listen to Livingstone and believe him, as we would but few who might tell us of the wastes of Africa, for we know that he has seen. Let your life be a life fragrant with peace, a life unselfish, devoted, Christ-like, a life of beauty, and it will bring a winning report of the land, and your hearers will say, "We will go with you. It will be a good land, for God is with you." Suppose a man from the cold and cheerless Arctic comes here. He comes from a land of chill and blasts, where the sun's warmth never falls, where no birds sing, and where flowers never bloom. Suppose a man from this zone of the Arctic were to come to our city and open an office upon Broadway. How many would listen and go back with him to the terrors of that frozen north? But suppose a man from the sunny south should come. He would tell of the birds that sing the whole year round, of the flowers that bloomed season after season, and the bubbling streams that flowed on for ever. Which of the two would repel and which attract? God's people are weak. Do not attribute their failures to the land from which they come. Do not set your reproof against the land. It is a glorious land. Go and make that land your land, your hope and your eternity. ( W. T. Sabine. ) And are ye still? Indifference to religion C. P. Longland. It may be that we wonder at the slowness of the Danites — wonder that they should hesitate to press forward and possess themselves of such an earthly inheritance; of such an inheritance because it was a part of the land promised by God to their fathers. May we not, however, be the more astonished at ourselves, as we remember our own indifference towards a heavenly inheritance? The habitation we now hold, straitened as it is, and but for time, must be resigned at the call of death, whether we have made any advance towards the heavenly inheritance or not. And why are we still? Is it because we are required to withdraw our affections from the earth? If so, we are to be gainers by it ( 1 Peter 1:4 ). And we ourselves often profess a desire to possess such a home. And often do we picture to ourselves a home where all that renders this life painful will be found no more. We desire a land which is "very good." Such a home, such a land, God's Word speaks of to us, and says that it is laid up for those who seek it ( 1 Corinthians 2:9 ). Yet few of us really seek this home; and so, in the words of the spies, we are again and again rebuked for our indifference. "Behold the land is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land." Now the spies declared, concerning the people of Laish: "When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land." 1. The security here alluded to was a false security. It was that careless indifference to danger — that want of thought for their own safety — which the people of Laish indulged. There was peace about them. They did not think of the possibility of its being broken. They, in fact, prepared the way for their own destruction. And Holy Scripture tells us who seek the heavenly inheritance: "When ye go ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land." But this security is a true one ( 2 Samuel 22:2, 3 ). 2. It is a large land. In it we shall dwell in peace with those who now enjoy its blessedness. Our entrance there will be followed by the gift of our God to us of fuller measures of love. Could we possibly desire a life more blessed than this? — a life passed with angels, and archangels, and all God's faithful ones. "Behold," then, "the land is very good, and the people dwell secure: and are ye still?" In order to rouse their countrymen, and to hasten them forward towards Laish, the spies declared, "God hath given it into your hands." Now these words either set forth the faith of the spies, and mean, "God will give it into your hands," or they refer to God's promise of old to Abraham ( Genesis 15:18 ), and mean, "Know ye not that it is yours already by promise? God hath given it into your hands, since He sware unto Abraham that he and his seed should possess it." And we would borrow their words, and say of heaven, "God hath given it into your hands." For ever since the Saviour shed His blood for you, heaven has been purchased thereby for your everlasting inheritance. Heirs, by promise, thereof, your baptism made you. Citizens of heaven ye are now. Take heed that ye forfeit not, by following the world and its lusts, your citizenship. Moreover, it was not purchased to be bestowed arbitrarily, and after the manner of men, upon a few. And this is evident from the whole of our blessed Lord's teaching. "In it there are many mansions." "It is a large country." And though many have passed from the earth, and are sure to enter it, "yet there is room." But for whom is their room? Oh, not for the proud and the haughty. Not for those who cry "Lord, Lord," yet do not the things which He hath commanded. Not for those who love this present world, yet profess to seek a better, but are still! There is room in heaven for the poor and humble in spirit, for those who follow "temperance, soberness, and chastity." The spies also sought to urge their countrymen on by declaring, concerning Laish, that it was "a place where there is no want of anything that is in the earth." So tempting a prize as this would, we should think, put away all hesitation, all fear of difficulties. And we declare the same of heaven. The blessings offered to the Danites had respect unto the present life. The blessings offered to us are those of the eternal life with God in heaven. Do you desire peace? It is there. Heaven is the abode of holiness; and where holiness is, there also is peace. Do you desire joy? It is there. In heaven sorrows and tears are not. Do you desire security? In heaven nothing shall disturb your peace, nothing shall diminish your joy. Do you long to offer unto God a worship holy and undefiled? In heaven you shall offer it. There you will join the sinless angels, and "the just made perfect," and with them worship and adore your God. ( C. P. Longland. ) Be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land Practical attention to religion Homiletic Magazine. I. SOME CONSIDERATIONS TO INDUCE AN EARNEST, PRACTICAL ATTENTION TO RELIGION. 1. Consider the glory and the grandeur of the inheritance to which you aspire. You see much of the wisdom of God in furnishing figurative descriptions of the blessedness of heaven. 2. Consider the encouraging assurances we have of success in our pursuit. 3. Consider the danger of remissness and indifference where interests so momentous are at stake. II. BRIEF SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE MEANS OF PROMOTING SPIRITUALITY OF MIND. 1. Endeavour to form a high standard of that holiness of character in which fitness for heaven consists. 2. Serious and devout meditation upon the Word of God should form a part of the business of every day. 3. Cultivate a devotional spirit. ( Homiletic Magazine. ) Fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim The stolen gods R. A. Watson, M. A. Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver, the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest, and set up a new worship in the city they build — all these represent to us types and stages of what is really schism, pitiful and disastrous — that is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of Divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness and outlawry of the soul. 1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of images, their ephod and teraphim, represent those who fall into the superstition that religion is good as insuring temporal success and prosperity, that God will see to the worldly comfort of those who pay respect to Him. Even among Christians this is a very common and a very debasing superstition. The sacraments are often observed as signs of a covenant which secures for men Divine favour through social arrangements and human law. The spiritual nature and power of religion are not denied, but they are uncomprehended. The national custom and the worldly hope have to do with the observance of devout forms rather than any movement of the soul heavenward. A Church may in this way become like Micah's household, and prayer may mean seeking good terms with Him who can fill the land with plenty or send famine and cleanness of teeth. 2. The Levite represents an unworthy, worldly ministry. Very few of those in the ranks of the Christian ministry are entirely concerned with the respect paid to them in society and the number of shekels to be got in a year. That he keeps pace with the crowd instead of going before it is perhaps the hardest thing that can be said of the worldly pastor. He is humane, active, intelligent; but it is for the Church as a great institution, or the Church as his temporal hope and stay. So his ministry becomes at the best a matter of serving tables and providing alms — we shall not say amusement. Here, indeed, is schism; for what is farther from the truth of things, from Christ? 3. Once more, we have with us to-day, very much with us, certain Danites of science, politics, and the press, who, if they could, would take away our God and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope, not from a desire to possess, but because they hate to see us believing, hate to see any weight of silver given to religious uses. Not a few of these are marching, as they think, triumphantly to commanding and opulent positions, whence they will rule the thought of the world. And on the way, even while they deride and detest the supernatural, they will have the priest go with them. They care nothing for what he says; to listen to the voice of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity of which they would not be guilty; for to their own vague prophesying all mankind is to give heed, and their interpretations of human life are to be received as the Bible of the age. Of the same order is the socialist who would make use of a faith he intends to destroy, and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to him, on his way to what he calls the organisation of society. In his view the uses of Christianity and the Bible are temporal and earthly. He will not have Christ the Redeemer of the soul, yet he attempts to conjure with Christ's words, and appropriate the power of His name. The audacity of these would-be robbers is matched only by their ignorance of the needs and ends of human life. ( R. A. Watson, M. A. ) Ye have taken away my gods The loss of gods Homilist. I. ALL MEN HAVE A GOD. 1. Whatever a man's god be, he deems it the greatest good. 2. But man's ideas of God are very deficient and conflicting. Some make a god of the means of gratifying their passions and lusts; others make money and riches their god; others the praise and approbation of their fellow-creatures, and others the outward rites and ceremonies of religion. 3. It is one thing to be religious; another and a very different matter to be godly, worshipping the Father "in spirit and in truth." II. FALSE GODS CAN BE TAKEN FROM THEIR DEVOTEES. 1. Often in life. Many, long before they die, lose the means of gratifying sense; many, early in life, though lovers of money, become pitifully poor; and many, by some means or other, are deprived of the means to pursue their accustomed mode of attending to religious rites, and therefore lose their gods. 2. In death. Sense cannot be gratified in the grave. No miser has ever been able to take a grain of his adored money to another world. The world's praise and blame are equally unimportant when a man feels he is to be ushered before the judgment-seat; and all religious rites and formularies are left behind for ever when we enter a world of spirits. III. THE LOSS, EVEN OF A FALSE GOD, WILL BE FELT TO BE A GREAT LOSS. "What have I more?" To tear the thing we have made our god from us is the greatest bereavement. Even though the thing is bad, it has been loved supremely, and the loss of it will create a vacuum and an agony intolerable. But the conscious loss of the true God — this is the climax of suffering. Then the soul is a chaos, an orphan in the universe. ( Homilist. ) Micah the Ephraimite W. R. Hutton, M. A. Consider the plan of life he made, and the reason why it turned out so badly. 1. He was not a heathen, though he was an idolater. He thought to serve God through the medium of idols. It was more comfortable to remain at home, and it was more easy to worship by means of what could be seen. He was like people who say that it is not necessary to go to church, because they can read the Bible and say their prayers at home; as if reading the Bible and saying prayers were the whole duty of the man! He was also like those who think that worship must be comfortable: they are not called upon to rise early or to adopt more than a sitting posture. You can see what the influence of idols would become in this man's life. Micah would gradually forget the unseen world of which they were supposed to remind him, and his image-shop would call for his constant care and attention. What soul he possessed would be centred there, and the presence of the Levite would soothe him with the notion that all was well. Nor was the life a lonely one, for others, it seems, lived near, and took an interest in the carved image, the ephod, the teraphim, and molten image: in fact, there was quite a comfortable little schism formed into which no one was likely to inquire. Such was the plan of Micah's religious life — a cheap one, you will observe, in spite of the ten shekels of silver and apparel and victuals, for no journeys need now be undertaken to other seats of worship, and no money offered to them. 2. And why did such an inexpensive way of serving God fail? Some rude travellers robbed him of his gods and his priest, and what had he more? It might have been possible to replace them, but the cost would have been much; besides, he had grown fond of these images, and this priest, and his heart was with them. It was too late to begin life again, and such handsome images it would be difficult to make. All might still have been well had he known what worship meant, but unfortunately in his service of God he had left out God. "God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth," Is there anything akin to us in the character of this poor man, who began by cheating others and ended by being cheated himself? 1. True religion cannot be easy, at least at first. It never can be cheap. To do God's will entails the sacrifice of ourselves, soul and body, to the Almighty. And so easy-going religion is popular. Men will not go far to a service. If they have their temple at their door they can drag their wearied limbs so far, but, unlike their forefathers, they do not care to walk a few miles to God's house. As for time and money, what a little suffices often to soothe the sleepy conscience! 2. Micah's religion was self-made. Has he not followers in those who teach that we can please ourselves in the manner and method of worship? Is it perfectly immaterial whether our Saviour made a Church or not, whether we continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayer, or not? And if these things do matter, surely they are worth a little hard thought. "We are all going the same way," people tell you. Yet it is inconceivable that all can be equally right. Are we not bound to give, each for himself, a reason for the form of the faith we hold? 3. Micah's religion failed him. His gods were taken away, and his priest, and what had he more? God was left out of sight. We can take the warning to ourselves. Our religion, it may be, has been largely outward: we have said formal prayers morning and evening; we have come to church and gone through services; we have read a few verses of the Bible as a disagreeable duty; we have hoped all was well; and suddenly, a big blow falls — and where are we? Is our religion a comfort? does it help to support us? Not a bit. Why? Because it was only skin-deep. ( W. R. Hutton, M. A. ) The stable and the unstable in religion A. R. Merriam. This story has but a faint analogy with what I wish to speak of — but yet it illustrates a principle applicable in all ages, that essential religion is some thing which cannot be stolen. Now there are all sorts of Danites — real hostile Danites, and men accounted such by timid souls who are not so at all. There are ruthless Danites, whose honest, or dishonest, aim it is to remove what they really seem to think religion is wrapped up in. And then there are friendly Danites, who would remove idol images out of a real love for a more spiritual and vital faith. But whoever the Danites be, this is true — that nobody is afraid of the Danites unless he has gotten a Micah religion; and nobody encourages the raids and raileries of the Danites — "What aileth thee?" — like the man who cries, "What have I more?" I. ANY RELIGION WHICH CENTRES IN A FORM OR ORGANISATION CAN BE STOLEN. This is only to say that external aids to devotion, and diverse organisation of God's host may be changed, and yet destroy none but a Micah faith which is wrapped up in them. But what has seemed so permanent and vital at different times, and to different souls, is just this very thing! The Micah faith of the Jews could be, must be, stolen away. But what was permanent? Reverence and worship of Almighty God. Again, take the New Testament. It was a zeal in God's name by which Jesus Himself cleansed the temple of His Father! And who ever stole away the Micah elements of religion as did our Lord Himself, in mingled love and indignation for God's eternal law? Again, have you ever realised that the great argument all through the Epistles of Paul is just this carrying-off process of that system, glorious in its purity and needed for its day, but now to pass, in its essential elements, into a different form of growth? His great contention every where is that there were shadow and substance both in the old Mosaic economy; that form was vanishing, its truth permanent; that Christ had fulfilled, or filled full, those great moral and spiritual needs of men which once were best fed by other means. Did He take away a single element that was permanent? II. STANDARDS OF WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG IN CONDUCT MAY BE STOLEN, and yet not carry off the eternal obligations of mortality. How often people have been trying to say that this, that, and the other thing is eternally right or wrong for everybody and all nations to do or not to do! It is this spirit which goes to the Bible, and in Leviticus and Ecclesiastes, as well as in John and Romans, would find, on one level of authority, some word to decide, as by a talisman, whether this or that is consistent for everybody everywhere to do or not to do. How this confuses and misrepresents the Bible! The Bible is a book of life, and so it has progressively changed and raised its forms of moral obligation from age to age. Right in the midst of the Old Testament, like a lighthouse in a storm, stand the ten commandments — true, not because they are there, but there because universally true; and yet even they are not true because that is the best or highest form of moral obligation; for Jesus says of that law, "It says so and so, but 'I' say" — carrying those same principles further and higher, and adding entirely new and deeper motives and sanctions. Negative "Thou shalt not" accomplishes for one man or one age what Jesus' positive "Thou shalt love" does for another — two forms of the same thing. See the progress in Bible standards! 1. Thou shalt not do wrong. 2. Thou shalt love God and man. 3. Love one another, "as I have loved you." There is a vast difference between these three ways of looking at one thing. III. What is true of forms of worship and standards of morals is true also of FORMS AND PROPORTIONS OF THEOLOGICAL ISSUES. Judged by the Micah creeds of men we might suppose the Christian world would have nothing left of faith after the Danites of each generation had carried away some things upon which every thing seemed to hang. We are living in a time when hosts of Christian people think the ark of God is in danger as it never was before. But when was there an age in which people did not say the same thing? This is said to be an era of readjustment and revolution. Yes; but so has nearly every age been accounted since Jesus came, if we may judge from the fearful auguries of every century. There are always some people perfectly sure if this or that doctrine is not held just as their fathers, or their Church or themselves hold it, that men are cutting loose from all sure anchorage. The reassuring thing is that that is just what men have always been saying, and yet despite dark doubt and augury, hostile Danites, and men so counted Danites in one age to be canonised in the next, have all stolen only what was either false or only one-sided and temporary. There is not a great fact or essential truth of Christian revelation which is not held as firmly this very day as ever before. ( A. R. Merriam. ) The Indian problem S. S Allnutt, M. A. Do we consider that a man situated as this man was a fit object of pity and sympathy or not? The stern, uncompromising iconoclast would certainly say, "No." He would feel that it was better for such an one to find out by bitter experience how vain and useless were the idols in which he trusted. In and through his desolation he might be brought to seek for help where alone it could be found. The mild, tolerant student of comparative religion would probably say, "Yes." He would urge on his behalf that at that particular point in the evolution of Jewish religion from its primitive worship of invisible forces it was inevitable that the worshipper should seek to give concrete form and embodiment to the anthropomorphic idea of God which was then being assimilated from the nations around. For such an one to be deprived of his idols was to be put out of rapport and correspondence with his religious environment, and as that meant spiritual death, he clearly deserves our pity in his destitution. Turning, however, from the merely speculative interest which the ancient Israelite's case presents, I wish to transfer it, "as in a figure," to the very real and practical interest presented by the parallel situation of a large section of our fellow-subjects in India, and to endeavour to answer the question just raised by considering what our duty to them is. For in the main the plea of the Jew of Mount Ephraim is being echoed now either in unexpressed feeling or in outspoken utterance by thousands of religious-minded Hindus in India. It is only with one portion of the problem that I would attempt to deal; that, namely, which is connected with the sphere of Christian education. It would be to repeat an oft-told tale to recount at any length what has been and will be increasingly the necessary result of such contact of the West with the East as our rule in India has brought about. That contact is unique and unprecedented in some if not all of its conditions, and must be expected to produce strange and unlooked-for, even contradictory, results. But it is of the moral aspect of them only that I wish to speak. When the Government of India decided that State education must be conducted on the principle of religious neutrality and non-interference, it does not appear whether the disintegrating effect of purely secular instruction was fully realised. What, in short, was not foreseen, but is now being daily found to be the inevitable result of the State system of education, is that while it tends to destroy much that was hurtful and fatal to progress, it fails to supply the place of what it destroys by any new and vital principle of cohesion and solidarity. The son goes back to his home and announces to his parents that he has learnt to rise superior to caste traditions and prejudices, and it is found that what this amounts to practically is, that while he has a veneer of Western learning and science, he has lost his hold of what is the very life and soul of any society, the sense of obedience, of reverence, of duty in the family and in the State. He has gained, indeed, ideas of freedom, of independence, of equality, of self-assertion, but if he has lost or is in danger of losing these other ideas, which surely it is true to say are more fundamental and indispensable for the well-being of the family and the nation, is not the loss likely to be greater than the gain, at any rate for the Indian? If there is any virtue which the caste system can claim to have developed and preserved, it is the instinct of reverence and obedience. And it is this instinct which it is the tendency of our education to weaken if not to destroy. And further, it is precisely in those parts of India which are most advanced in Western knowledge where this tendency is seen in its fullest development. What wonder is it, then, that the parent who hears of the boasted advantages of Western science and education bewails the result of it in words which seem an echo of the cry of the Jew of Mount Ephraim "Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and what have I more? and how then say ye unto me, What aileth thee?" But this is not all. The student, bereft of the moral sanctions of his religion, and supplied with no new motives of obedience and rectitude, is exposed to yet other dangers. If the demon of superstition has been expelled, there are the seven other spirits more wicked than the first, ready to rush in and occupy the vacant, cheerless room. For the mental facilities of the Indian student are far in advance of his moral faculties. This is so naturally; and when the course of education tends almost exclusively to develop the intellectual part of him, the disparsity becomes all the more marked. The moral element in him, already of weakened vitality, is gradually starved out, and the struggle for superiority is rather between the animal and the intellectual. There are many noble exceptions, but they cannot redeem a system which condemns the majority to moral sterility. It is to the Christian Church, and that alone, that we must turn for the assertion and vindication of the principles of true reform, as well as for the moral dynamic which is to energise and embody them in and through an actual visible living society. And it is quite wonderful to notice how India's need of the gospel is being recognised on all sides and in the most unexpected quarters. The politician looks to the spread of Christianity as one great source of strength and stability for the permanence of British Empire. The educationalist looks to our native Christian women as at present the most hopeful means of making female education effective among the upper classes. Sir W. W. Hunter has lately said, "Christianity holds out advantages of social organisation not offered by Hinduism or Islam. It provides for the education and moral supervision of its people with a pastoral care which Islam, destitute of a regular priesthood, does not pretend to. It receives the new members into its body with a cordiality and a completeness to which Hinduism is a stranger. I believe," he says, "it is reserved for Christianity to develop the highest uses of Indian caste, 'as a system of conservative socialism.'... But it will be Indian caste humanised by a new spiritual life."Or to take one or two more specific cases. The tahsildar or head native officer of a large country town appeals to a missionary to send a Christian teacher for a Hindu school, because he finds the Hindu teachers have yielded to the prevailing immorality of the town. The municipality of a large city in the Punjab appoints a native Christian minister its chairman because they can find no other man so high-minded and honest for the post. The only great modern religious reformer India has produced bore witness on his death-bed to India's need of Christ. When the man of Macedonia stood before St. Paul that night in the vision, did not the pathos of the cry, "Come over and help us," arise from the very fact of its being the unconscious appeal of the heathen world for help? And if the response to that cry was the mission to Europe, which was the origin and cause of all that is highest and best and noblest in our life and thought here to-day, shall the Church's response to India's cry be less prompt, less devoted, less full of faith and hope and love, when she has that greatest of all examples to inspire and stimulate her, the experience of the power of the message he bore to support and guide her in her task, the certainty of final victory, not in our time, but in God's time, to cheer and encourage her till Christ comes to claim the kingdom for His own? ( S. S Allnutt, M. A. ) And what have I more? The beyond in religion Christian World Pulpit. It was natural that Micah should deplore the loss of his images. We may smile at his grief, and say that he was a very ignorant and a very superstitious man. Doubtless he might have reflected that the loss was not irreparable; doubtless he might have consoled himself with the thought of what remained. And yet we, with our purer faith and nobler creed, need to remind ourselves that such superstition is not altogether unknown amongst us. There has always been a tendency to mistake the o

Benson Commentary Judges 18:1 In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. Jdg 18:1 . In those days there was no king in Israel — These words seem to be repeated in order to assign the reason of such enormous practices as are recorded in this and the preceding chapter. They appear to have taken place not long after Joshua’s death, probably between his death and that of the elders who survived him, and the time of Othniel, who was the first judge raised up for them by God. The tribe of the Danites — A part of that tribe, consisting only of six hundred men of war, with their families, Jdg 18:21 . Sought them an inheritance — An inheritance had been allotted them as well as the rest of the tribes, ( Joshua 19:40 , &c.,) but partly by their indolence, and partly for want of that brotherly assistance which ought to have been afforded them by other tribes, a considerable portion of this inheritance could not be acquired by them. Wanting room, therefore, for all their people and cattle, and being unable to contend with the Amorites, they sent some, as it here follows, to search out a new dwelling elsewhere. Judges 18:2 And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valour, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land: who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there. Jdg 18:2-5 . They lodged there — Not in the same house, but near it. They knew the voice of the young man — Having been acquainted with him before he came to live with Micah. Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God — By thine ephod and teraphim, or image, which they knew he had. This and the following verse show that this sanctuary of Micah was dedicated to the true God, and not to idols. But how ignorant were these Danites, to suppose God would be consulted here as well as in his house at Shiloh! Judges 18:3 When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite: and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? and what makest thou in this place ? and what hast thou here? Judges 18:4 And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest. Judges 18:5 And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous. Judges 18:6 And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is your way wherein ye go. Jdg 18:6 . The priest said, Before the Lord is your way — Your design is under the eye of God; that is, under his direction, protection, and care. The priest undoubtedly feigned this answer; for it is not to be imagined that he could, in such a case, have any answer from God, either through his ephod and teraphim, or in any other way. From hence, however, we may infer, Micah and his priest gave out that God might be inquired of by their means as well as at his oracle at Shiloh. Judges 18:7 Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man. Jdg 18:7 . After the manner of the Zidonians — Who, dwelling in a very strong place, and abounding in wealth, lived securely in peace and luxury, and were imitated therein by the people of Laish, who were grown secure and careless, because they perceived that the Israelites never attempted any thing against them. There was no magistrate that might put them to shame — That is, rebuke or punish them for any thing they did. Putting to shame seems to be used for inflicting civil punishment, because shame is generally the effect of it. They were far from the Zidonians — Who otherwise could have succoured them, and would have been ready to do it. Had no business with any man — No commercial connection, or any alliance with the neighbouring nations, nor much intercourse or converse with other cities, the place being in a pleasant and plentiful soil, between the two rivulets of Jor and Dan; not needing supplies from others, and therefore minding only their own ease and pleasure. Judges 18:8 And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye? Judges 18:9 And they said, Arise, that we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: and are ye still? be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land. Judges 18:10 When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land: for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth. Jdg 18:10 . God hath given it into your hands — This they gather partly from God’s promises, which they supposed they had from the Levite’s mouth, and partly from his providence, which had so disposed them that they would be an easy prey. Judges 18:11 And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of war. Judges 18:12 And they went up, and pitched in Kirjathjearim, in Judah: wherefore they called that place Mahanehdan unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjathjearim. Jdg 18:12-14 . Mahaneh-dan — That is, the camp of Dan. They came unto the house of Micah — That is, to the town in which his house was, for they had not yet entered into it. Then answered the five men — That is, they spake; the word answering being often used in Scripture of the first speaker. There is in these houses — That is, in one of these houses. Consider what ye have to do — Whether it be not expedient to take them for your further use. Perhaps the remembrance of the ark being carried before their ancestors in former times, in all their expeditions, as a mark of God’s presence being among them, might incline them to the foolish and impious thought of taking with them Micah’s ephod and teraphim. Judges 18:13 And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came unto the house of Micah. Judges 18:14 Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish, and said unto their brethren, Do ye know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image? now therefore consider what ye have to do. Judges 18:15 And they turned thitherward, and came to the house of the young man the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and saluted him. Judges 18:16 And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war, which were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate. Judges 18:17 And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering of the gate with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons of war. Jdg 18:17-19 . The five men came in thither — Into the house and that part of it where the things were. The priest stood in the gate — Whither they had drawn him forth, that they might without noise or hinderance take the things away. And these went into Micah’s house — Namely, the five men, to whom when they were fetching out the image, &c., the priest said, What do ye? And they said, Lay thy hand upon thy mouth — That is, be silent. A priest unto a tribe and a family — A tribe or family. Judges 18:18 And these went into Micah's house, and fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image. Then said the priest unto them, What do ye? Judges 18:19 And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel? Judges 18:20 And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people. Jdg 18:20-21 . The priest’s heart was glad — As he was promised promotion, he not only consented to the fact, but assisted them in it, being wholly governed by a regard to his own secular interest. He went in the midst of the people — Both for the greater security of such precious things, and that Micah might not be able to come near him to injure or upbraid him; and, perhaps, also, because that was the place where the ark used to be carried. They put the little ones, and the cattle, &c., before them — For their greater security, if Micah should pursue them. Judges 18:21 So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the cattle and the carriage before them. Judges 18:22 And when they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men that were in the houses near to Micah's house were gathered together, and overtook the children of Dan. Judges 18:23 And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with such a company? Judges 18:24 And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? and what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee? Jdg 18:24 . My gods which I made — Or, rather, my god, as the Hebrew word generally signifies, meaning the image, which he considered as a symbol of God’s presence with him; for he could not be so stupid as to think it to be the great Jehovah, who made heaven and earth, and whom he professed to worship, but merely as a medium through which he offered up his worship to him, as many of the heathen did. What have I more? — I value nothing I have in comparison of what you have taken away. Which zeal for idolatrous trash may shame multitudes that call themselves Christians, and yet value their worldly conveniences more than all the concerns of their own salvation. Is Micah thus fond of his false gods? And how ought we to be affected toward the true God? Let us reckon our communion with God our greatest gain; and the loss of God the sorest loss. Wo unto us, if He depart. For what have we more? Judges 18:25 And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household. Jdg 18:25 . Let not thy voice be heard — Thy complaints and reproaches. Lest angry fellows run upon thee — The soldiers, who are sharp and fierce and will soon be inflamed by thy provoking words. And thou lose thy life — Which, notwithstanding all thy pretences, thou valuest more than thy image, teraphim, and ephod. Judges 18:26 And the children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back unto his house. Judges 18:27 And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire. Jdg 18:27-29 . And burned the city with fire — Not wholly, but in a great measure, to make their conquest more easy. They built a city — Or, rather, repaired and enlarged that which they found there. After the name of Dan — That it might be manifest they belonged to the tribe of Dan, though they were settled at a great distance from them in the most northerly part of the land; whereas the lot of their tribe was in the southern part of Canaan. Judges 18:28 And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lieth by Bethrehob. And they built a city, and dwelt therein. Judges 18:29 And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first. Judges 18:30 And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land. Jdg 18:30 . The children of Dan set up the graven image — Having succeeded in their expedition, according to the prediction they supposed they had through the image, they had a great veneration for it. And as soon as they had completed their city, they set it up, and chose a minister to officiate for them, probably the Levite who had acted as priest for Micah, and is, at length, named here, Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh: not of that Manasseh who was the head of the tribe so called, for he had no son named Gershom, but, as is generally thought, of some other Manasseh of the tribe of Levi; Gershom and Manasseh being names common in Israel. Until the day of the captivity — When the whole land of the ten tribes, whereof Dan was one, was conquered, and the people carried captive by the Assyrians, ( 2 Kings 17:6 ; 2 Kings 17:23 ,) which is called, by way of eminence, the captivity. The Jewish rabbis, however, Kimchi and Ralbeg, argue, that it is altogether unlikely this image should be suffered to continue in the days of David, who was sedulous to destroy idolatry, and advance true religion to the utmost of his power, all the country over from Dan to Beer-sheba, and who is therefore said to be a man after God’s own heart. Hence, they conclude, that by the captivity of the land here is meant the taking of the ark by the Philistines, and carrying it captive into the temple of Dagon. The later Jews, in general, approve of understanding the words in this sense; and “it is surprising,” says Houbigant, “that they have not seen that ????? haaron, the ark, should have been read here for ???? haarets, the land.” But it ought to be observed, that it is not said here, the graven image was there till the captivity of the land, but only that Jonathan’s posterity were priests till that time, to this tribe or family of Dan. This they might be, under all the changes which took place, even till the Assyrian captivity, sometimes more openly, sometimes more secretly, sometimes in one way of idolatry, and sometimes in another. In the mean time, it is only affirmed, that the Danites had the graven image with them while the house of God was in Shiloh, which was removed thence when the ark of God was taken, 1 Samuel 4. So that the captivity of the land, here spoken of, may be that by Shalmaneser, as stated above, and yet David, during his reign, may have destroyed all idols out of the land. Judges 18:31 And they set them up Micah's graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Judges 18:1 In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. THE STOLEN GODS Jdg 17:1-13 , Jdg 18:1-31 THE portion of the Book of Judges which begins with the seventeenth chapter and extends to the close is not in immediate connection with that which has gone before. We read {Jdg 18:30} that "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land." But the proper reading is, "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses." It would seem that the renegade Levite of the narrative was a near descendant of the great lawgiver. So rapidly did the zeal of the priestly house decline that in the third or fourth generation after Moses one of his own line became minister of an idol temple for the sake of a living. It is evident, then, that in the opening of the seventeenth chapter, we are carried back to the time immediately following the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, when Othniel was settling in the south and the tribes were endeavouring to establish themselves in the districts allotted to them. The note of time is of course far from precise, but the incidents are certainly to be placed early in the period. We are introduced first to a family living in Mount Ephraim consisting of a widow and: her son Micah, who is married and has sons of his own. It appears that on the death of the father of Micah a sum of eleven hundred shekels of silver, about a hundred and twenty pounds of our money-a large amount for the time-was missed by the widow, who after vain search for it spoke in strong terms about the matter to her son. He had taken the money to use in stocking his farm or in trade and at once acknowledged that he had done so and restored it to his mother, who hastened to undo any evil her words had caused by invoking upon him the blessing of God. Further she dedicated two hundred of her shekels to make graven and molten images in token of piety and gratitude. We have here a very significant revelation of the state of religion. The indignation of Moses had burned against the people when at Sinai they made a rude image of gold, sacrificed to it and danced about it in heathen revel. We are reading of what took place say a century after that scene at the foot of Sinai, and already those who desire to show their devotion to the Eternal, very imperfectly known as Jehovah, make teraphim and molten images to represent Him. Micah has a sort of private chapel or temple among the buildings in his courtyard: He consecrates one of his sons to be priest of this little sanctuary. And the historian adds in explanation of this, as one keenly aware of the benefits of good government under a God-fearing monarch-"in those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes." We need not take for granted that the worship in this hill chapel was of the heathen sort. There was probably no Baal, no Astarte among the images; or, if there was, it may have been merely as representing a Syrian power prudently recognised but not adored. No hint occurs in the whole story of a licentious or a cruel cult, although there must have been something dangerously like the superstitious practices of Canaan. Micah’s chapel, whatever the observances were, gave direct introduction to the pagan forms and notions which prevailed among the people of the land. There already Jehovah was degraded to the rank of a nature divinity, and represented by figures.` In one of the highland valleys towards the north of Ephraim’s territory Micah had his castle and his ecclesiastical establishment-state and church in germ. The Israelites of the neighbourhood, who looked up to the well to do farmer for protection, regarded him all the more that he showed respect for religion, that he had this house of gods and a private priest. They came to worship in his sanctuary and to inquire of the ecclesiastic, who in some way endeavoured to discover the will of God by means of the teraphim and ephod. The ark of the covenant was not far away, for Bethel and Gilgal were both within a day’s journey. But the people did not care to be at the trouble of going so far. They liked better their own local shrine and its homelier ways; and when at length Micah secured the services of a Levite the worship seemed to have all the sanction that could possibly be desired. It need hardly be said that God is not confined to a locality, that in those days as in our own the true worshipper could find the Almighty on any hill top, in any dwelling or private place, as well as at the accredited shrine. It is quite true, also, that God makes large allowance for the ignorance of men and their need of visible signs and symbols of what is unseen and eternal. We must not therefore assume at once that in Micah’s house of idols, before the widow’s graven and molten figures, there could be no acceptable worship, no prayers that reached the ear of the Lord of Hosts. And one might even go the length of saying that, perhaps, in this schismatic sanctuary, this chapel of images, devotion could be quite as sincere as before the ark itself. Little good came of the religious ordinances maintained there during the whole period of the judges, and even in Eli’s latter days the vileness and covetousness practised at Shiloh more than countervailed any pious influence. Local and family altars therefore must have been of real use. But this was the danger, that leaving the appointed centre of Jehovah worship, where symbolism was confined within safe limits, the people should in ignorant piety multiply objects of adoration and run into polytheism. Hence the importance of the decree, afterwards recognised, that one place of sacrifice should gather to it all the tribes and that there the ark of the covenant with its altar should alone speak of the will and holiness of God. And the story of the Danite migration connected with this of Micah and his Levite well illustrates the wisdom of such a law, for it shows how, in the far north, a sanctuary and a worship were set up which, existing long for tribal devotion, became a national centre of impure worship. The wandering Levite from Bethlehem-Judah is one, we must believe, of many Levites, who having found no inheritance because the cities allotted to them were as yet unconquered spread themselves over the land seeking a livelihood, ready to fall in with any local customs of religion that offered them position and employment. The Levites were esteemed as men acquainted with the way of Jehovah, able to maintain that communication with Him without which no business could be hopefully undertaken. Something of the dignity that was attached to the names of Moses and Aaron ensured them honourable treatment everywhere unless among the lowest of the people; and when this Levite reached the dwelling of Micah beside which there seems to have been a khan or lodging place for travellers, the chance of securing him was at once seized. For ten pieces of silver, say twenty-five shillings a year, with a suit of clothes and his food, he agreed to become Micah’s private chaplain. At this very cheap rate the whole household expected a time of prosperity and divine favour. "Now know I," said the head of the family, "that the Lord will do me good seeing I have a Levite to my priest," We must fear that, he took some advantage of the man’s need, that he did not much consider the honour of Jehovah yet reckoned on getting a blessing all; the same. It was a case of seeking the best religious privileges as cheaply as possible, a very common thing in all ages. But the coming of the Levite was to have results Micah did not foresee. Jonathan had lived in Bethlehem, and some ten or twelve miles westward down the valley one came to Zorah and Eshtaol, two little towns of the tribe of Dan of which we have heard. The Levite had apparently become pretty well known in the district: and especially in those villages to which he went to offer sacrifice or perform some other religious rite. And now a series of incidents brought certain old acquaintances to his new place of abode. Even in Samson’s time the tribe of Dan, whose territory was to be along the coast west from Judah, was still obliged to content itself with the slopes of the hills, not having got possession of the plain. In the earlier period with which we are now dealing the Danites were in yet greater difficulty, for not only had they Philistines on the one side but Amorites on the other. The Amorites "would dwell," we are told, "in Mount Heres, in Aijalon and in Shaalbim." It was this pressure which determined the people about Zorah and Eshtaol to find if possible another place of settlement, and five men were sent out in search. Travelling north they took the same way as the Levite had taken, heard of the same khan in the hill country of Ephraim, and made it their resting place for a night. The discovery of the Levite Jonathan followed and of the chapel in which he ministered with its wonderful array of images. We can suppose the deputation had thoughts they did not express, but for the present they merely sought the help of the priest, begging him to consult the oracle on their behalf and learn whether their mission would be successful. The five went on their journey with the encouragement, "Go in peace; before the Lord is your way wherein ye go." Months pass without any more tidings of the Danites until one day a great company is seen following the hill road near Micah’s farm. "There are six hundred men girt with weapons of war with their wives and children and cattle, a whole clan on the march, filling the road for miles and moving slowly northward. The five men have indeed succeeded after a fashion. Away between Lebanon and Hermon, in the region of the sources of Jordan, they have found the sort of district they went to seek. Its chief town Laish stood in the midst of fertile fields with plenty of wood and water. It was a place, according to their large report, where was no want of anything that is in the earth." Moreover the inhabitants, who seem to have been a Phoenician colony, dwelt by themselves quiet and secure, having no dealings or treaty with the powerful Zidonians. They were the very kind of people whom a sudden attack would be likely to subdue. There was an immediate migration of Danites to this fresh field, and in prospect of bloody work the men of Zorah and Eshtaoi seem to have had no doubt as to the rightness of their expedition; it was enough that they had felt themselves straitened. The same reason appears to suffice many in modern times. Were the aboriginal inhabitants of America and Australia considered by those who coveted their land? Even the pretence of buying has not always been maintained. Murder and rapine have been the methods used by men of our own blood, our own name, and no nation under the sun has a record darker than the tale of British conquest. Men who go forth to steal land are quite fit to attempt the strange business of stealing gods that is appropriating to themselves the favour of divine powers and leaving other men destitute. The Danites as they pass Micah’s house hear from their spies of the priest and the images that are in his charge. "Do you know that that there is in these houses an ephod and teraphim and a graven image and a molten image? Now therefore consider what ye have to do." The hint is enough. Soon the court of the farmstead is invaded, the images are brought out and the Levite Jonathan, tempted by the offer of being made priest to a clan, is fain to accompany the marauders. Here is confusion on confusion. The Danites are thieves, brigands, and yet they are pious; so pious that they steal images to assist them in worship. The Levite agrees to the theft and accepts the offer of priesthood under them. He will be the minister of a set of thieves to forward their evil designs, and they, knowing him to be no better than themselves, expect that his sacrifices and prayers will do them good. It is surely a capital instance of perverted religious ideas. As we have said, these circumstances are no doubt recounted in order to show how dangerous it was to separate from the pure order of worship at the sanctuary. In after times this lesson was needed, especially when the first king of the northern tribes set his golden calves the one at Bethel, the other at Dan. Was Israel to separate from Judah in religion as well as in government? Let there be a backward look to the beginning of schism in those extraordinary doings of the Danites. It was in the city founded by the six hundred that one of Jeroboam’s temples was built. Could any blessing rest upon a shrine and upon devotions which had such an origin, such a history? May we find a parallel now? Is there a constituted religious authority with which soundness of belief and acceptable worship are so bound up that to renounce the authority is to be in the way of confusion and error, schism and eternal loss? The Romanist says so. Those who speak for the Papal church never cease to cry to the world that within their communion alone are truth and safety to be found. Renounce, they say, the apostolic and divine authority which we conserve and all is gone. Is there anarchy in a country? Are the forces that make for political disruption and national decay showing themselves in many lands? Are monarchies overthrown? Are the people lawless and wretched? It all comes of giving up the Catholic order and creed. Return to the one fold under the one Shepherd if you would find prosperity. And there are others who repeat the same injunction, not indeed denying that there may be saving faith apart from their ritual, but insisting still that it is an error and a sin to seek God elsewhere than at the accredited shrine. With Jewish ordinances we Christians have nothing to do when we are judging as to religious order and worship now. There is no central shrine, no exclusive human authority. Where Christ is, there is the temple; where He speaks, the individual conscience must respond. The work of salvation is His alone, and the humblest believer is His consecrated priest. When our Lord said, "The hour cometh and now is-when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth"; and again, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I in the midst of them"; when He as the Son of God held out His hands directly to every sinner needing pardon and every seeker after truth, when He offered the one sacrifice upon the cross by which a living way is opened into the holiest place, He broke down the walls of partition and with the responsibility declared the freedom of the soul. And here we reach the point to which our narrative applies as an illustration. Micah and his household worshipping the images of silver, the Levite officiating at the altar, seeking counsel of Jehovah by ephod and teraphim, the Danites who steal the gods, carry off the priest and set up a new worship in the city they build-all these represent to us types and stages of what is really schism pitiful and disastrous-that is, separation from the truth of things and from the sacred realities of divine faith. Selfish untruth and infidelity are schism, the wilderness and outlawry of the soul. 1. Micah and his household, with their chapel of images, their ephod and teraphim, represent those who fall into the superstition that religion is good as insuring temporal success and prosperity, that God will see to the worldly comfort of those who pay respect to Him. Even among Christians this is a very common and very debasing superstition. The sacraments are often observed as signs of a covenant which secures for men divine favour through social arrangements and human law. 2. The spiritual nature and power of religion are not denied, but they are uncomprehended. The national custom and the worldly hope have to do with the observance of devout forms rather than any movement of the soul heavenward. A church may in this way become like Micah’s household, and prayer may mean seeking good terms with Him who can fill the land with plenty or send famine and cleanness of teeth. Unhappily many worthy and most devout persons still hold the creed of an early and ignorant time. The secret of nature and providence is hid from them. The severities of life seem to them to be charged with anger, and the valleys of human reprobation appear darkened by the curse of God. Instead of finding in pain and loss a marvellous divine discipline they perceive only the penalty of sin, a sign of God’s aversion, not of His Fatherly grace. It is a sad, a terrible blindness of soul. We can but note it here and pass on, for there, are other applications of the old story. 3. The Levite represents an unworthy worldly ministry. With sadness must confession be made that there are in every church pastors unspiritual, worldlings in heart, whose desire is mainly for superiority of rank or of wealth, who have no vision of Christ’s cross and battle except as objective and historical. Here, most happily, the cases of complete worldliness are rare. It is rather a tendency we observe than a developed and acknowledged state of things. Very few of those in the ranks of the Christian ministry are entirely concerned with the respect paid to them in society and the number of shekels to be got in a year. That he keeps pace with the crowd instead of going before it is perhaps the hardest thing that can be said of the worldly pastor. He is humane, active, intelligent; but it is for the church as a great institution, or the church as his temporal hope and stay. So his ministry becomes at the best a matter of serving tables and providing alms-we shall not say amusement. Here indeed is schism; for what is farther from the truth of things, what is farther from Christ? Once more we have with us today, very much with us, certain Danites of science, politics, and the press who, if they could, would take away our God and our Bible, our Eternal Father and spiritual hope, not from a desire to possess but because they hate to see us believing, hate to see any weight of silver given to religious uses. Not a few of these are marching, as they think triumphantly, to commanding and opulent positions whence they will rule the thought of the world. And on the way, even while they deride and detest the supernatural, they will have the priest go with them. They care nothing for what he says; to listen to the voice of a spiritual teacher is an absurdity of which they would not be guilty; for to their own vague prophesying all mankind is to give hoed, and their interpretations of human life are to be received as the bible of the age. Of the same order is the socialist who would make use of a faith he intends to destroy, and a priesthood whose claim is offensive to him, on his way to what he calls the organisation of society. In his view the uses of Christianity and the Bible are temporal and earthly. He will not have Christ the Redeemer of the soul, yet he attempts to conjure with Christ’s words and appropriate the power of His name. The audacity of these would be robbers is matched only by their ignorance of the needs and ends of human life. We might here refer to the injustice practised by one and another band of our modem Israel who do not scruple to take from obscure and weak households of faith the sacraments and Christian ministry, the marks and rights of brotherhood. We can well believe that those who do this have never looked at their action from the other side, and may not have the least idea of the soreness they leave in the hearts of humble and sincere believers. In fine, the Danites with the images of Micah went their way and he and his neighbours had to suffer the loss and make the best of their empty chapel, where no oracle thenceforth spoke to them. It is no parable, but a very real example of the loss that comes to all who have trusted in forms and symbols, the outward signs instead of the living power of religion. While we repel the arrogance that takes from faith its symbolic props and stays we must not let ourselves deny that the very rudeness of an enemy may be an excellent discipline for the Christian. Agnosticism and science and other Danite companies sweep with them a good deal that is dear to the religious mind and may leave it very distressed and anxious-the chapel empty, the oracle as it may appear lost forever. With the symbol the authority, the hope, the power seem to be lost irrecoverably. What now has faith to rest upon? But the modern spirit with its resolution to sweep away every unfact and mere form is no destroyer. Rather does it drive the Christian to a science, a virtue far beyond its own. It forces we may say on faith that severe truthfulness and intellectual courage which are the proper qualities of Christianity, the necessary counterpart of its trust and love and grace. In short, when enemies have carried off the poor teraphim and fetishes which are their proper capture they have but compelled religion to be itself, compelled it to find its spiritual God, its eternal creed and to understand its Bible. This, though done with evil intent, is surely no cruelty, no outrage. Shall a man or a church that has been so roused and thrown back on reality sit wailing in the empty chapel for the images of silver and the deliverances of the hollow ephod? Everything remains, the soul and the spiritual world, the law of God, the redemption of Christ, the Spirit of eternal life. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.