us their meaning, and when he is driven to this he writes with a sword, he speaks with a tempest trumpet.

We have seen how Here he has recourse

Amos is fond of interrogative parables. often he puts a parable into an enigma. to his favourite method of exposition and suggestion, saying, "Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plow there with oxen?" Amos was a philosopher before the time. He talks here, though hardly knowing that he is so talking, about the "laws of nature." The passage may be interpreted variously. We may take it for practical purposes as indicating a certain law of cause and effect, a law of fitness of things, a law of possible and impossible. "Shall horses run upon the rock," and break their limbs ? "Will one plow there with oxen?"-who can make a plough that will cut rocks? Then there is a law of nature. How easily we assent to that proposition! But how difficult it is for us to understand the term "law of nature" in its larger uses and applications! There are those who are eloquent upon the laws of nature who only talk about those laws on one side or aspect. Is there no law of nature of a moral kind? Has the whole spiritual region of life no law, no philosophy, no genius which represents the fitness of things? Is there not a law of nature which demands that the child shall be filial? Is there not a law of nature which says that there are sovereignties that must be obeyed? Is there not a law of nature which calls for thankfulness as the natural sequence of benefaction? Is there no impulse toward the Eternal? Is there not a law which says to him who would find eternity in time, Set down the goblet, for out of that small vessel thou canst not drink immortality? We talk about these laws of nature as if they were limited, mechanical, ponderable, and such as can be represented in plain figures. Or, if we talk about laws of nature, why not take in all the laws of nature, all impulses, volitions, tendencies, aspirations, dumb strugglings after things above and beyond? Never imagine that the laws of nature are confined to certain mechanical and dynamical actions which are accessible only by the physiologist, or the chemist, or the biologist. There are laws of nature, and it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. It will be hard for thee to turn wrong into right. "The way of transgressors is

hard": that is as certainly a law of nature as any procession of the stars or sequence of the seasons. In talking, therefore, about laws of nature take in all life, all nature, all possibilities of being; then you will not be pedants, but philosophers.

"Thus hath the Lord God showed 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. And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive" (vii. 1, 2).

There is the triune God forming-for the verb should be represented as rather an immediate and continuous action than an action already accomplished. This, indeed, is the key of many passages of Scripture, that the action is still proceeding. God is still forming man out of the ground; God is still creating man in his own image and likeness; God is still forming judgments, and making heavens of reward. The Lord humbles his creatures by the very instruments which he sometimes uses. An army could meet an army; but what soldiery could fight a grasshopper? or what cannon can strike the beast in a vital part? Where is it? What its magnitude? What its weight? What space does it occupy? Give us these data, and we will take them to the mathematician, and he will make elaborate calculations, and shape his weapon accordingly. That cannot be done. There may be a greater population on a green leaf than you find in all England. There may be a larger congregation in a drop of water than ever assembled in a cathedral. The Lord will not send some red-coated soldiery down to fight those apostates; he will make grasshoppers, and in the morning the grass will all be gone. We are told by those who have lived in lands known to grasshoppers and locusts, and other devouring

* Locusts occur in great numbers, and sometimes obscure the sun-Exod. x. 15; Jer. xlvi. 23; Judg. vi. 5, vii. 12; Joel ii. 10; Nah. iii. 15. Their voracity is alluded to in Exod. x. 12, 15; Joel i. 4, 7, 12, and ii. 3; Deut. xxviii. 38; Psalm lxxviii. 46, cv. 34; Isa. xxxiii. 4.

They are compared to horses (Joel ii. 4; Rev. ix. 7).

They make a fearful noise in their flight (Joel ii. 5; Rev. ix. 9)

They have no king (Prov, xxx. 27).

Their irresistible progress is referred to in Joel ii. 8, 9.

They enter dwellings, and d. vour even the woodwork of houses (Exod.

x. 6; Joel ii. 9, 10).

They do not fly in the night (Nah. iii. 17).

insects, that to-day there shall be fifty acres of luxuriant corn waving in the summer wind, radiant, and beautified by the summer sun, and in less than twenty-four hours it shall be cut off within an inch of the root. By what? By swords? No; there were dignity in dying by a sword; the murder is not so rough, the instrument is long and sharp and silver-handled. By what ministry has this destruction been wrought? There is a tone of contempt in the very enunciation of the name-this is the work of locusts, this is the miracle of grasshoppers.

Amos sees another vision,

"Thus he showed me; and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel" (vers. 7, 8).

These words are open to two meanings: I have measured up Israel, and none of it shall be lost; or, I will try Israel by a plumbline, and whatever is out of plumb shall be thrown down. The Lord's government is represented by a plumbline. He will have no leaning pillars; he builds no fancy Pisas; he is not a God of eccentricity. The Lord will have right; he will have the square, the vertical, the exact; he will not accept a rough polygon for a circle. His eyes are flames of fire; he weighs the actions of men in the scales of the sanctuary. The king knows what is written on the wall. Men have made wonderful expositions of "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,"-simply meaning, Pounds, ounces, pennyweights. There need be no esoteric meaning about the writing. The king knew it; he said, This means weighing: I have to go upon the scales; the weighing time has come: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." Sometimes we have to be weighed without our consent being obtained. All life has to be weighed; the plumbline has to be set against every wall, and if the building be bad, as bad as it will be if not built first with the plumbline, down it goes, not arbitrarily, but because the laws of nature, gravitation, will not have crooked lines and bad speculative building and mean jerry-work in its holy universe. There must be a great tumblingdown of bad building. On the other hand, we can lay comfort to ourselves by saying that because there is a plumbline in the

hand of God no good action shall be allowed to fall, no good building shall perish; nothing that is right shall suffer loss; the judgment of God is but an aspect of his mercy.

Amos talked thus roughly and frankly, and Amos had a poor congregation. Men do not like this kind of speech. Better talk in polysyllables that jingle to one another, and call rhyme poetry; better sing some wordless lullaby, for thieves like sleep after felony. Who cares for judgment? If Amos were to return to the church there is not a congregation in the world that he would not dissolve. Amaziah represents what would happen: "O thou seer"-there is mockery in the tone: thou man of eyes; seeing, penetrating, piercing looker; thou cowherd seer-“ go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there [sell thy judgments in Judah]: but prophesy not again any more at Beth-el: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court"-go, talk to the rabble, but do not let the king hear thy raving! The prophet of God has always been handed down to the poor. There is a refinement that cannot speak above whispers; there is a delicacy that goes daintily down to hell,-quietly, easily, gracefully; but you can hear the rustle of the silk as it goes down to be burned. The religious teachers have always been handed over to the canaille, to the rubbish of society. Religion has always been regarded as an excellent thing for the East-end,

A

Chapter vii. 10-17.

THE TRUE MINISTRY.

MAZIAH was no true priest. He mimicked the priesthood

and made the best he could of it; he was not called or ordained of God. Amaziah, therefore, was a false priest, and whatever he says will have a note of falsity in it. When he says good words they will turn to bad ones upon his lips. No flower retains all its bloom when a bad man culls it; it is ashamed of its ownership.

“Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam king of Israel” (ver. 10).

A very familiar policy; the very rudest idea that could occur to the commonest quality of mind. Amaziah has no answer in music; he cannot supply a counterpart to the wondrous talk of Amos; therefore he adopts the policy of describing Amos as a conspirator. How the tone of the prophecy changes at this point! Whilst Amos talks we are in the presence of one who with the thunder talks as friend to friend, who lays his hand familiarly on the ocean's mane, and plays with those hoary locks without sign or throb of fear. When Amaziah comes upon the scene all he can say is, that Amos is at enmity with the king, and is seeking to carry out some political idea fatal to the throne. Accuse the man to the king, was Amaziah's simple but base policy.

Before the days of Amaziah, and since, this policy has been, and has become, well known. Jesus Christ was accused of seeking to overturn the throne of Cæsar-"If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend." That staggered Pilate. He knew he was the friend of Cæsar-any Cæsar; he pledged his troth and loyalty to the throne, and not to the passing Cæsar only. He was therefore stupefied, bewildered, lost. And the apostles were pursued by the same charge. There was no other