and no sooner did these men feel the sting of fire upon their consciences, than they rose, and would have thrust down to death the speaker who enchanted their imagination.

When will Amos return? When will the Son of man send a vicegerent that shall speak in his own tone and represent his own earnestness? Until then the congregation occupies itself in somnolent admiration, and the Church turns itself into an institution devoted to the barren process of mutual congratulation. The church is wrong. All archbishops and bishops, all popes and presbyters, all nonconformist ministers and evangelists, are alike in this condemnation. There does not issue from the pulpit of the church, taking the word Church in its largest explication, that tremendous voice of thunder which is an eternal challenge to all evil, and a perpetual terror to all evildoers. So long as the House of Lords and the House of Commons, so long as the House of Senate and of Congress, and the Body Legislative, so long as the parliaments of all countries can say, "We may do as we like, for the clergy are dumb dogs that cannot bark," we shall have a decadent church; but when the Church in all its departments, in all its sections, is ardent with the fire of the divine presence; when it will overhaul all legislative enactments; when it will discuss them at the altar; when it will dispute over them under the very shadow of the Cross; when bishops, men of learning, presbyters and ministers, men of practical experience and burning eloquence, arise and say, "You shall not damn this nation, unless you do it in the face of our protest," -when that day comes, know ye that the Lord has come. so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Even

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, it is a fearful thing to fall into thy hands when thou dost arise to judge the earth; yet God is love, and it is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men. Thou dost not willingly grieve or afflict thy children. Judgment is thy strange work, mercy is thy delight; in wrath thou dost remember mercy, and even in thy judgment thou callest to mind that we are but dust. Who can stand before the Lord when he ariseth? Who can answer the thunder of the Most High? When thou dost plead against us with all thy power behold we wither away; but thou comest to us in gentleness, in pity, in tears, in redeeming compassion. If we will rend our hearts and not our garments, if we will make confession of sin, and cry unto the Lord for pardon at the Cross of Christ, and for the sake of his work, behold all heaven is not enough for us, thou dost fill us with gladness and promise us immortality. We thank thee for all thy light and care, thy wisdom and strength, thy grace all-healing, all-conquering; and for the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, profitable to direct, and working in us evermore the miracle of sanctification. Good is the Lord; the will of the Lord be done, the judgment of the Most High be turned aside by the work of the Saviour, and all the tenderness of the Cross be revealed unto us that we may not die in the darkness of despair. We pray at the Cross; we sing at the Cross; we remember and forget our sins at the Cross. O hear us in heaven thy dwelling-place, and when thou hearest, Lord, forgive! Take away from us thy rebuke, and hide not thyself from our petition. Amen.

Chapter iv.

MORAL DEGRADATION.

"Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink " (ver. 1).

DA

Amos speaks

AVID speaks of bulls-"bulls of Bashan." of "kine"; another word, with subtler meanings, which cannot be expressed in terms. The whole people had sunk into sensuality. To say they were distinguished by effeminacy is to expose a word innocent in itself to false interpretations. The whole society spoken to by the reproachful prophet was sunk in the worst forms of selfishness and baseness. This farm servant does not choose his words with any view to consulting the taste of his hearers. He must get at their attention.

When a man is determined to arrest the attention of the public he must not be too particular in the use of terms, or the use of words only that are permitted in the court of perverted and fickle taste. There are prophets who are speaking to the taste of the age, and the taste of the age takes no heed of their mincing words. They are not prophets, therefore. They have on the official robe, and they stand upon the official floor, but they are not prophets, because they do not use words that burn their way into the attention of the heart and the judgment. This farm servant, this field hand, comes crashingly down amid the corruptions of his day, and looking upon the wealthiest men lounging in their divans of ivory, nicely cornered where no draughts can reach them, and calling for more drink, he says, "Ye kine of Bashan "-ye filthy women, men-"hear this- "It was well

He

for Amos that he was not a farmer, but only a labourer. would have been evicted. Poverty can be independent, skill can be courageous; a man who has a living in his fingers has no favours to ask; it is only the gentleman who cannot make his own living who has to beg some other people to let him live. Amos did not say, Gentlemen, nobles, aristocrats, feudal lords; he said, "Ye kine of Bashan." He addressed them as if they had gathered in a stable which itself had not been cleansed for a century, the very air of which reeked with pestilence. We must not send dainty men to do rough work; instruments must be adapted to the function which is demanded of them. There are those who cannot listen to speakers whose voices rise above the level of a whisper. By all means let such people have such gospel as they can receive; but an age marked by avarice, cupidity, oppressiveness, self-indulgence, and every form of evil, must listen to voices often grating, crashing, thunder-like, and carrying with no uncertain emphasis the express and direct judgment of God.

What is the charge against these fallen ones? They "oppress the poor," they "crush the needy." Yet, reading between the lines, and in the light of the day in which this history was written, it is perfectly possible that all this oppression and crushing was done secondarily, so that the men who were guilty of it did not personally and immediately know what they

were doing. Does that relieve them of responsibility? Not one whit. The men in question curtained themselves in their divans, lounged at ease, dreamed the devil's nightmare, enjoyed themselves in all the range and gamut of evil aspiration, and allowed others to crush the needy. There are those who find it convenient not to see all that they are doing; there is a sense of grim comfort about drawing the curtain around one, and letting all manner of oppression and crushing and evil-doing be conducted without our personal cognisance of the ghastly facts. This is the charge against the once-called people of God. Is it an ancient charge? Is it a reminiscence that requires a very skilful historian to recall in all its particularity and applicableness? Verily this is the iniquity of to-day. The senior partner does not know what the junior partner is doing; can the senior partner therefore preside over a Christian assembly, and talk pious twaddle, without being responsible for what his more energetic coadjutor is doing? Let him answer the question before he touches the altar in prayer, before he puts to his lips the blood of sacrament. Are they guiltless who leave a church, a country, a family, and so long as they can reap profit enough for their own advantage, care nothing how that profit is extorted from those who are oppressed? If the throne of God is holy, there is a dark day of answering for all such traitors and all such unfaithful souls. It is convenient to have some inner chamber, in which seniority can rest, and whence it can call for more drink, more luxury, more gold, no matter at what cost; but God's fire will find its way into that innermost chamber, and burn it. Blessed be the name of the Judge, for he is interested in the poor; the case of the needy is his. Wherever there is oppression he hates it, and when men seek to sanctify robbery he calls it robbery, and throws it into hell. We need some blunt Amos to talk to us in our mother tongue. The moment he becomes rhetorical he becomes insincere; yet he must create a ritual of his own, noble, massive, resonant, marching through his audience as if by right-intellectual, moral, divine right. You are bound to know how your servants are living. You are called upon by the God of Amos to find out how much you are giving to the least little boy in your establishment. If you are giving a thousand a year for the conversion of people you never saw, and

are starving your own apprentices and employes and servants at home, you are bad. If thou say, "I knew it not," God will condemn thee out of thine own mouth. Why read reports of things five thousand miles away, and not know that a man in your own employment is at this moment dying of consumption, has a wife and four or five little children, and hardly a coal in the grate, and not much bread in the cupboard? You are bound to stop your carriage at his door, and save him from destroying hunger. That may make no impression in the public halls of the kingdom, but it will be written in the Book of Life, and in the other book, one day to be read aloud by the Judge, the inconsumable record written in heaven. What Amos dare tell us these things? Lord, send him! He will be crucified, but thou wilt receive him to glory.

"The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness" (ver. 2).

Then it is a moral controversy. Nothing short of the holiness of God is pledged and involved in this argument. God does not swear by his majesty, but by his character. It is because he is holy he is going to take this action. Whenever holiness is interested in a controversy, know that the most obstinate and persistent force known to human nature is engaged in the strenuous contention. Always be afraid of an opponent who is working along the line of a noble character. The religious man is the most determined opponent of evil. The political economist is a calculator, an arranger; he thinks that perhaps the operation of evil had better be suspended, because it interferes with the adjustment of the comings and goings, exports and imports, and internal statistics. He will give way under pressure. Holiness never gives way. Fire will not give in, and the fire of the divine heart is enlisted against all men who oppress the poor and crush the needy. Find a man who is a politician, who operates only from political considerations, and he will be here to-day and there tomorrow; he will listen to know what is being said; he will calculate and arrange and adjust, and see how balances run, and listen to the eloquence of averages. Find a man whose conscience is alive, whose very mind has become a moral organ, whose whole soul is committed to the cause of right, and he will never yield; he cannot be changed, he is a representative of an eternal