ing is like the warning that might be given to the head of any family given to beastly excesses: "There shall not be an old man in thy house." "All the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age." Later the child prophet Samuel was commissioned as follows: "And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin I will also make an end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not."

Having here introduced the name Samuel, I will add that later in life the offices of prophet and judge were combined in the person of Samuel. It is apparent that to grayheaded age he maintained among his people the reputation of being a just and incorruptible judge as well as a judicious adviser and leader. Samuel was the last of the "judges." The prophets, however, never ceased to participate in politics.

When King Ahab coveted the vineyard of Naboth, and weakly yielded to the scheme of robbery and murder inaugurated by Jezebel, his wife, through which the vineyard was obtained, it was Elijah the prophet, the teacher of religion, who appeared before him in obeIdience to the command from the Lord: "Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria: behold he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. And thou shalt speak saying, Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thus shalt thou speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine."

When David had departed from the path of morality, it was a prophet whose reproof was sent home, like an arrow, pointed with the words, "Thou art the man."

These are instances in which the defender of morality did not blanch nor tremble in the presence of a king.

Immorality among the people is rebuked no less vigorously than when it appears among their rulers. The relation between re

ligion and morality is made very plain and very emphatic by Isaiah. He begins his first chapter with an exclamation of astonishment: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken; I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that corrupt themselves: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward."

From this opening, if the prophet had gone no farther, we should feel quite sure that the chosen people had forgotten all those minute instructions in the ceremonious religion in which they were to worship the true God while they were being gradually won from idolatry and prepared for the coming of the Great Teacher. They must have forgotten what they should do at the time of the new moon, how they should observe the Sabbath, and how they should offer those various sacrifices of different animals; or, if they had not

forgotten these, they must have neglected them, for they had "gone away backward."

Following these words are a few verses in which are pictured the disasters that had already come through this backsliding. But at the eleventh verse we begin to see in what respect these children had rebelled against the Lord who had nourished and brought them up.

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me who hath required this at your hands, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I can not away with: it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your

hands are full of blood. Wash ye, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

Here was the difficulty. They were not treating their neighbors as they should.

The instruction given at another place by this prophet does not leave us at liberty to trifle with moral questions, nor to treat them with indifference: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" We are to draw an unmistakable line separating these things, to uphold the right and to condemn the wrong.

Jeremiah did not, perhaps, put more fire and vigor into his denunciation of wrongdoing than Isaiah did unto his, but I will take a specimen passage from Jeremiah:

"O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! O that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I