acted as if he did not himself believe that it would come to pass. For men's actions are more than their words; and it would have been of little consequence that the prophet in public, and in his official character, if I may so speak, should have denounced Jeroboam and his worship as sinful, if privately, and in those moments when a man's real sentiments appear, he should hold friendly intercourse with one of the prophets of that worship, and enter with him into the sacred relations of hospitality.

Such were the old prophet's motives; motives arising out of no hatred to the prophet of Judah, but simply from a wish to make it appear, that the cause of the worship of Bethel was not so evil as might be thought from the prophet's public message; and that the prophet by his own acts showed that he himself did not so regard it. And therefore, when he found that the prophet had fallen a victim to his policy, that he had been himself condemned for lowering in a manner the sentence of God's condemnation against others, then his heart smote him, and while he mourned for him whom his arts had ruined, and said over his grave, "Alas, my brother!" he confirmed with his own lips the voice of that sentence on which he had vainly endeavoured at the price of so much guilt to throw discredit.

But now if from understanding this story, as a

thing which took place in Judæa so many hundred years ago, we proceed to ask what is its meaning for us, and what instruction we may derive from it, then the answer must be given warily and with knowledge, or else we shall turn the Scripture to our hurt and not to our benefit.

story of the disobedient

Here, as every where else in the Scripture, the spirit of the story is an eternal lesson; the letter of it, as in so many other parts of the Old Testament, must be looked upon as passed away. I mean that it is a lesson for us, if we take into our account the differences between our situation and that of the Jews: if we do not do this, it will then absolutely mislead us. Now, before I proceed to apply this rule to the prophet, I will show its necessity by another part of the same chapter, where it says that "Jeroboam made of the lowest of the people priests of the high places: whosoever would, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places;" and adds immediately, "that this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam." Now I have actually met with comments upon this passage, which have argued from it against appointing Christian ministers from what are called the lower orders. This is a complete instance of the mischief of quoting the letter of the Scripture, and not its spirit. It is surely not hard to know that the priesthood among the Jews, as amongst almost

all ancient nations, was confined to one particular family; that no one who was not of the seed of Aaron could lawfully be made a priest. It might be known also that the priest's business was not to teach, but to offer sacrifice; and that Christian ministers are in no respect like the priests among the Jews, but rather like the prophets. Now the prophets were chosen from any family, and from any condition of life: for instance, the prophet Amos was chosen from the lowest of the people, for he was a herdsman; and in like manner, the first and greatest Christian ministers, our Lord's own Apostles, were fishermen, or engaged in other employments equally humble. The letter, therefore, of this passage about Jeroboam has passed away; we have no priests under the Gospel, and our prophets or ministers, like the prophets of old, may be taken freely from any family, or from any condition of life. But the spirit of it remains; that is, it is a grievous sin to appoint as a Christian minister any man who wants that quality, which is as essential to the Christian ministry as being born of a particular family was essential to the Jewish priesthood. This quality is holiness; and he who were to consecrate to our ministry whosoever would,-whosoever wished to enter it, let his ignorance or his wickedness be ever so great; he, and he only, would be guilty in this matter of the sin of Jeroboam.

Now, then, we must apply the same rule to the whole story of the disobedient prophet. If we do not, a Roman Catholic might very falsely apply it as condemning all Protestants, or a member of the Church of England might use it as falsely as condemning all Dissenters. A Roman Catholic might say that our King Edward VI. did exactly what Jeroboam did; that he would not let his people go up to Rome to worship, as they had been used to do, but set up another worship of his own in England, like the high places at Bethel and at Dan. And a Churchman might in the same way argue, that the Dissenters were like Jeroboam; that they, too, had separated from the worship of their fathers, and had made places of worship for themselves. And so both would be ready to speak the language of the prophet of Judah, and think it right to hold no intercourse with Protestants in the one case, with Dissenters in the other, according to the command given to the prophet. They would say also, that those who argued in favour of toleration, that they who spoke at all in defence of Protestants or of Dissenters, were false servants of God, like the old prophet of Bethel, trying to make that appear innocent, or at most a light fault, which in God's judgment was a great one. Many, I dare say, would shrink from the practical conclusion of this sort of reasoning, who yet, far from seeing its

fallacy, might themselves, in other matters, be tempted to apply the Scriptures just in the same way. But here again, the spirit of the story is our wholesome food, the letter is poison. It was one of the very main points of the Jewish worship, that it should be performed in one place only; in that place which the Lord should choose to set His name there. The sacrifices were to be offered in one place, and by the one high priest of the nation; other sacrifices offered by other priests were all forbidden. But forasmuch as our worship is now changed, in that prayer and sacrifice are dissevered, and prayer is our only earthly worship; therefore whilst our sacrifice is still as of old offered in one place only, in the presence of God, by our own High Priest who is passed into the heavens, and as all other sacrifices for sin which we should strive vainly to offer would be as abhorred as the golden calves of Bethel and of Dan, so of that other part of worship, prayer and praise, it is expressly said that it may be offered lawfully alike in every place;-not in the mountain of Gerizim only, nor in Jerusalem, shall they worship the Father, who worship Him in spirit and in truth-whenever and wherever two or three are gathered together in Christ's name, there is He in the midst of them.

We cannot, then, apply the story to ourselves according to its literal meaning, and it would be