of society in his day, emphasizing on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the intolerableness of it, he asserted that nothing could avert the inevitable doom-neither Israel's devotion to Jehovah nor Jehovah's interest in Israel. 'You alone have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.' The visitation was to take place in war and in the captivity of the people. This is practically the whole message of the prophet Amos.

"Of the great antitheses between which religion moves, Law and Love, Amos had therefore been the prophet of Law. But we must not imagine that the association of Love with the Deity was strange to him. This could not be to any Israelite who remembered the past of his people – the romance of their origins and early struggles for freedom. Israel had always felt the grace of their God. Amos is not unaware of this ancient grace of Jehovah. But he speaks of it in a fashion which shows that he feels it to be exhausted and without hope for his generation.

"We perceive, then, the problem which Amos left to prophecy. It was not to discover Love in the Deity whom he had so absolutely identified with Law. The Love of God needed no discovery among a people with the deliverance, the exodus, the wilderness and the gift of the land in their memories. But the problem was to prove in God so great and new a mercy as was capable of matching that Law, which the abuse of His millennial gentleness now only the more fully justified. There was needed a prophet to arise with as keen a conscience of Law as Amos himself, and yet affirm that Love was greater still; to admit that Israel were doomed, and yet promise their redemption by processes as reasonable and as ethical as those by which the doom had been rendered inevitable. The prophet of Conscience had to be followed by the prophet of Repentance.

66 Such an one was found in Hosea, the son of Beeri, a citizen and probably a priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, Salvation, the synonym of Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear to his people."Condensed from G. A. Smith.

Hosea's Life.

"The first and second chapters of Hosea's prophecy have evidently been re-edited by a later disciple who has added

the appropriate subtitle, 'The Beginning of Jehovah's Revelation by Hosea.' In the third chapter the prophet's experiences are told in the first person; but in the opening chapters his words have been incorporated in a framework in which the prophet is spoken of in the third person. In the second chapter also the account of his own personal experience, which binds together the narrative of the first and third chapters, has apparently been blended with one of Hosea's sermons, in which he traces the close analogy between his own experience with his unfaithful wife, Gomer, and Jehovah's experience with faithless Israel. Separating the narrative material of chapter 2 and introducing the sermon contained in that chapter in its logical position after chapter 3 a clear and consistent record of Hosea's early life is secured.

"Briefly, but plainly, Hosea tells of the tragic domestic experience which opened his eyes to the appreciation of those fundamental truths which made him a prophet. Looking back from the vantage point of later years, he realized that the strong love which he had felt for Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and all the pain which his marriage with her had brought to him, were not without their profound significance and permanent value. Dean Plumptre, in his poem, 'Gomer' (in 'Lazarus and Other Poems'), has nobly and truly voiced the feelings with which Hosea interpreted his early history. "Through all the mystery of my years,

There runs a purpose which forbids the wail
Of passionate despair. I have not lived
At random, as a soul whom God forsakes;
But evermore His Spirit led me on,

Prompted each purpose, taught my lips to speak,
Stirred up within me that deep love, and now

Reveals the inner secret.'

"Later events had disclosed the base character of the woman who had commanded his youthful affection; but even as he rose above the ruins of his home and his fond ambitions, Hosea could declare in the light which the painful experience brought him, that in it all God was leading him on to his true life-work." Kent.

Hosea's Teachings Regarding God.

"Hosea's theology was exceedingly simple because he stood so near to the heart of God. The divine justice, which Amos had emphasized so strongly and so truly, became in the light

of Hosea's broader vision but the expression of divine love in dealing with ignorant, defiant sinners. Like all the prophets, he found no blind chance ruling in the affairs of men. For him there were only two forces in all the universe: the one was love divine in its origin and effects; the other was sin, whether born of human ignorance or deliberate wrongdoing. The history of the past was but a record of God's endeavor, through the varied experiences of life and by a gradual process of training, to free men from the bondage of sin and to lead them into intelligent appreciation of his loving character and purpose.

"Hosea was also the first to appreciate fully that the development of the perfect nation or the perfect man was a gradual, educational process. The people 'were being destroyed for lack of knowledge' and the priests were denounced because they had 'rejected knowledge and forgotten the instruction of their God.' Repeatedly Hosea seemed to say, If men but knew God and the real nature of his demands, to sin would be impossible.

"While Amos appears to have condemned the forms of religious worship as useless, Hosea denounced the religious formalism of his day simply because it was misdirected. For him true religion and the worship of Jehovah was the mainspring of all human activity. Israel was drifting on to its ruin because it lacked an intelligent, commanding faith. The heinous social and moral crimes of his day he traced to the same lack in the lives of his fellow-countrymen.

"With his supreme conception of God's character and purpose, it was also inevitable that Hosea should paint true and glorious pictures of the future. The sin and disasters of the present, he taught, were but passing. The real life of men was destined to be far different. Health and peace and material well-being, as well as the higher spiritual blessings, were the ultimate goal toward which God was leading mankind.”— Kent.

Hosea's Place among the World's Religions.

"Measured in the light of his times and by his influence upon the prophets who succeeded him, Hosea was the most original and constructive of all the religious teachers who appeared before the exile. The prophet Isaiah constantly draws inspiration from his impassioned words. Jeremiah not only reiterates his teachings, but also frequently uses Hosea's striking figures. The Second Isaiah builds his magnificent

teachings squarely on the foundations laid by Hosea. Hosea's condemnation of the worship at the local sanctuaries and his supreme doctrine of love and kindness toward man and all of God's creatures, reappear in many of the enactments found in the prophetic law-book of Deuteronomy. His teachings regarding the love of God, the character and effects of sin, the necessity of repentance, God's readiness to forgive, and the duty of love and kindness from man to man, are the essence of that gospel which Jesus proclaimed to all the world. Like the great Teacher of Nazareth, Hosea's method was positive. Although he could, when occasion demanded, bitterly denounce the existing evils, he ever held up before his people the positive goal, the fulness of life, that perfect harmony which will prevail when God's loving will is done on earth as it is in heaven."Kent.

ADDITIONAL READING REFERENCES.

Cornill, The Prophets'of Israel, chapter on Hosea. Moore, Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 188-192. Kent, Kings and Prophets of Israel and Judah, pp. 80-102. Fowler, History of the Literature of Ancient Israel, chapter on Hosea. Harper, Commentary on Amos and Hosea. Bible Dictionaries under Hosea. See also J. M. Powis Smith, The Prophet and his Problems, chapter V, for an interesting recent modification of the above theory of Hosea's marriage.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE COUNSELS OF A STATESMAN-PROPHET.
THE WRITINGS OF ISAIAH.

PURPOSE OF THE LESSON.

To teach the pupils calmness and give them moral strength, through faith in God.

TELLING THE LESSON STORY.

The northern kingdom, or the so-called kingdom of the "ten tribes," was crushed by the Assyrian power in 722 B.C., after a little more than two centuries of national life. We now turn to the kingdom of Judah, which continued in existence for a century and a half longer. This continued existence was due in part to the geographical isolation of Judah. The

northern kingdom was less mountainous; and many of the main roads between Babylonia and Egypt led through the center of its territory; Judah, on the other hand, was back among the hills, and the main highways passed down the coast to the west of her. There was another reason, however, why Judah survived the northern kingdom; and that was because after the fall of Samaria the influence of the prophets was more manifest. King Hezekiah, who came to the throne in 715 B.C., brought about certain reforms in accordance with the principles of Micah and Isaiah. These men were carrying on in Judah the work which Amos and Hosea had begun in the north. Of the two men, Micah lived in Moresheth in western Judah. He was much the same kind of a man as Amos. Isaiah, on the other hand, was a city boy, born and brought up in Jerusalem, and familiar with the manners and customs of courts. This fact gave him large opportunities for serving his nation. (Go on with an outline of the facts in the remainder of the story.)

DISCUSSING THE LESSON.

For a change, the teacher might begin by printing in large letters on the blackboard, or on a paper tablet, some such words as these:

DANGER

BE CAREFUL

Suppose your pastor were to have these words printed on a large poster, and placed on the bulletin board on the village green or printed as an advertisement in the newspapers. What would happen? Certainly the attention of every one would be attracted. This was one of Isaiah's devices for securing attention, and typical of his unconventional and startling methods. He actually posted a notice much like the above, with these words in large letters:

"SWIFT BOOTY, SPEEDY PREY."

And when a crowd had gathered, he explained the meaning of the words, namely, that Assyria was soon to conquer all the neighboring nations in Palestine, and might attack Judah, unless the rulers and people of Judah followed the guidance of Jehovah. What a success Isaiah would have made as a modern advertising man! During three winters he wore only his summer clothing, to emphasize his stern warning that