nature than eense a part of it, the principle has too generally been the party in the conflict compelled to succumb. Men, till they have been divinely renewed, appear always to have found the exercise of faith, in its higher domains, their "strange work." They have not repudiated it in their own human relations; they have testified to the existence of the germ of it in themselves ; that germ has not refused to show life and growth in human evil and while it could raise its head at all in earthly atmosphere, but it undoubtedly has seemed smitten and blighted in proportion as the atmosphere offered it has been most pure and nearest heaven. Idolatry evidently fights against faith in two of its highest functions. 1. As that which offers to reveal to an inner eye rather than display to the bodily eye. 2. And as that which whispers ever, "Wait, wait," expectant of a future, possibly even a distant future, in place of seizing the gratification of the present hour. It is against these same things that an unre- generate human nature ever opposes itself. Those vast spheres of life, that tremendous force of life which the bodily eye cannot see, and that power which gives to distance nearness, to the far, far-off future the name of "now," are the aversion of sense, the delights of faith. The Israelites' idolatry in grosser form brings out, from the very first instances in which the charge of it was fixed upon them, these as the plain rather than deep or mysterious causes of it. A more developed world's idolatry, a wiser world's idolatry, a far subtler world's idolatry, needs not to go in quest of any deeper, remoter sources. These are deep enough and too incontestable. Ill. WHAT CONSIDERATIONS OF SPECIAL AGGRAVATION ABE INSTANCED HEBE. 1. The hosts of the people "transgressed against the God of their fathers." The sin of their idolatry was, therefore, heightened by the fact that it was against: (1) One long known to them as a nation; (2) One entitled to their more scrupulous veneration for the honour and the love they owed their own fathers; (3) One of whom those fathers had oft told them "the wondrous works he had wrought" on their behalf. The history of their own God, which began for them with Abraham, which received so striking au impulse in Joseph, which was the talk of the whole earth from the deliverance from Egypt and the passage of the Red Sea, which glittered again with event and circum- stance and miracle in the journeyings of the wilderness, and which shone bright as the noonday sun in the glorious reigns of David and Solomon ;-was this a history which could permit them to transgress idolatrously against him who had invested them with all that was greatest and most merciful and fullest of glory? 2. While the people thus forsook their own God and the God of their fathers, for whom, for what was it they thus acted? It was to supersede him (1) by the very gods of the people of the land, whom they superseded, and of whose land they took possession ; (2) by the very gods of the people whom their own God alone had driven out and had destroyed before them, and from their vengeance had safely preserved them. Privilege, mercy, and warning they flagrantly set at nought. 'l'hey forfeited, without the pretence of an excuse, exalted place, distinguishing honour. Unprovoked, untempted except of their own evil heart nnd lusts, they forsook the true God and their true and mighty Friend in order to go with an unholy love, with a self-ruining service, after false gods. Such rebellion was indeed "the sin of witchcraft," such "stubbornness was iniquity and idolatry." And to a people so long led and loved of the Lord, so well fed and securely kept, that rebellion and stubbornness brought what they ever must bring to those who yield to them, the loss of their very highest good, the forfcitiug of their grandc:;L privileges, and the dread eclipse of Divine favour and presence.
HOMILIES BY V.ARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver. 2.-Judali's pre-eminence. The tribe of Judah holds the first and most promi- n_ent place in these genealogies. Reuben was the firstborn, and Joseph had the birth- nght; but precedence was given to Judah. This was foretold in the remarkabie language in which old Jacob, upon his dying bed, spoke of this ouo of his sons and the tribe of which he was the progenitor. I. THE TRIBE OF JUDAH TOOK PRECEDENCE OF ALL. ,vhen the tribes were number~d under Moses, that of J11dah was found to exceed all the others in number. When the lsrnelites were organized for the war ngainst the Canaanites, Judah was divinely ,4 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [CH, V, 1-26.
appointed to be the vangua1·d of the anny. A similar precedence is accorded to the tribe of Judah in this Book of Chronicles. II. FROM THE TRIBE OF JUDAH SPRANG DAVID AND THE ROYAL HOUSE. Of Israel the Lord chose Judah, and of that tribe the family of Jesse, and of that family the youthfu_l David. The great King of Israel and_ his glorious son shed a splendour upon t~e nat10nal annals. And when the separation of the kingdoms came about, the kmgdom of Judah was distinguished in many ways, both civil and relicrious 0 above the sister kingdom of Northern Palestine. '