IX.]

ZEAL HUMAN AND EARTHLY.

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executed theirs; whatever is the traditional conception of our time we fall into and embrace; when that is worn out we go in search of some external novelty. But between the mere selfish idolater and the faithful man, there is, we have seen, an intermediate type of character which many a devotee, many a one whom God would make a champion of His own, too easily admires and adopts. Zeal is so precious a gift, is so much wanted for the service of mankind, it is so rare, that the evil spirit is certain to assault those who possess it, and will not leave them till he has worked hard to make a precious trust from God into his own instrument. And seeing that there are a multitude of kindly compromising men in the world, who represent all energetic indignation against wrong, as unnecessary, disturbing, unphilosophical, unchristian, those who believe that no form of falsehood is to be tolerated, but to be abhorred, who are convinced that good men exist to protest against evil, who remember that He who was meek and lowly, made a scourge of small cords to drive the money-getters out of His Father's house, and that he denounced Scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites,-men, I say with these strong persuasions and lively recollections, are stirred up by the indifference which others exhibit and boast of, to a kind of savageness and fury. They must make their voices heard in the streets, they must if they can, hasten on the purposes of God, and themselves execute part of His wrath. Alas! what are they striving for? It is the driving of Jehu for he driveth furiously'-this is the best memorial that will remain of him who has let his zeal become his master when it was meant to be his servant, and who has counted it a pleasure instead of a hard necessity to destroy. "Oh my father the chariots of Israel and the horses

154 THE HIGHER ZEAL OF THE PROPHET. [Serm. IX.

thereof," these were the words which a king of Israel of Jehu's house, spoke to Elisha as he lay sick and dying. He felt that a power was passing out of the world which was greater than his, and than that of all the kings who had been before him, because it was power, which-doubtless amidst innumerable confusions and errors, a thousand selfwilled efforts and self-confidences-had yet in the main been consecrated to the God of truth and meekness, had been used in conformity with His mind, and therefore had spread health and peace around it. Was it better to kill the seventy sons of Ahab or to bring up sons of the prophets? To be the executor of God's vengeance on the land or to shew that He was the healer of its sicknesses? To make it clear that Death is the certain wages of sin or to affirm by acts and words that there is One who raiseth the dead? Which mission was the nobler in the old time? Which must be nobler for those who believe that God gave His only begotten Son not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved?

SERMON X.

THE SHEPHERD PROPHET.

LINCOLN'S INN, SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY.-FEB. 15, 1852.

AMOS, VII. 10-15.

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, "Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land.' Also Amaziah said unto Amos, "Oh thou seer go flee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there. But prophesy not again any more in Bethel, for it is the king's court and the king's chapel." Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son. But I was an herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go prophesy unto my people Israel.''

THE Jeroboam spoken of in this passage was the fourth king of the house of Jehu. From the time of Jehu, we hear of the Syrians under Hazael, as the great oppressors of the Samaritan kingdom. "In those days" (that is before the death of Jehu) it is said, "the Lord began to cut

156

THE SUCCESSORS OF JEHU.

[Serm.

them in all the coasts of So of his son Jehoahaz, it of Jeroboam the son of And the anger of the

Israel short; and Hazael smote Israel."-2 Kings, c. x., v. 32. is recorded, "he followed the sins Nebat, which made Israel to sin. Lord was kindled against Israel, and He delivered them into the hand of Hazael, king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-hadad, the son of Hazael, all their days. And Jehoahaz besought the Lord, and the Lord hearkened unto him, for He saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them. And the Lord gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians. And the children of Israel dwelt in their tents as beforetime."-c. xiii. The country had then been reduced to a state of extreme weakness. "The king of Syria," it is said, "had left of the people to Jehoahaz but fifty horsemen and ten chariots and ten thousand footmen; for he had destroyed them, and had made them like the dust by threshing." From that time began a revival in the outward prosperity, though not in the internal condition, of the people. "Jehoash did evil in the sight of the Lord;" but he took out of the hand of Benhadad the cities which Hazael had taken out of the hand of his father. "Three times did Jehoash beat him, and recovered the cities of Israel.” His son Jeroboam was still more successful. He is said to have restored the coasts of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain. His reign of forty-one years must have been one of rare, and to the Israelites most unlooked for felicity, which would be felt in proportion to their previous depression and ignominy. Yet of him also it is said, that "he departed not from the sins of the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin."

The victories of Jeroboam are said in the II. Kings, c. 14,

X.]

JONAH AND AMOS.

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v. 25, to have "fulfilled the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He spoke by the word of His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of GathHepher." Why, or when, or to whom, this prophecy was delivered, we have no means of knowing. Nothing further is said of Jonah in the history. The book in the canon of the Old Testament which bears his name does not touch upon the condition of the kings or people of Israel. Though it records a passage in the life of Jonah, it does not purport to be written by him. I reserve it for a later part of this course when the people to whom it refers will have become closely identified with our subject.

Very different is the case with the prophet Amos. Though he is not mentioned in the book of Kings, his own express language connects him with the period of which we are speaking as well as with the previous and subsequent history of the ten tribes. He did not however belong to them. He was a herdsman of Tekoa, a plain country situated in the south of Judea. The words of Amaziah, Jeroboam's priest, intimate that he was an intruder, one who might prophesy and eat bread in Judea if he pleased, but who had no business in Bethel near the king's house and the king's chapel. The answer of Amos gives us a glimpse into his own life, and throws much light on the character of his book. "I was not a prophet, he says, or the son of a prophet;" that is to say, 'I was no recognized member of the order, was attached to no school.' I was a herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit." One of that class to which Abraham and Moses and David had belonged; but not rich in fields and herds, in men-servants or maid-servants like the first; nor learned in the wisdom of the