tion through compliance with its desires. As God used the lying prophet so will He use the men of the world for the humbling of those who yield before their temptations. 3. The penalty. Death in the land where he had sinned. Hie carcase, bnried in Bethel, declared the truth his obedience should have impressed. God will judge His unfaithful servants. If not glorified in their service, He will be glorified in their punishment.-J. U. Vers. 23-34.-Judgment and its result. I. MERCY DISPLAYED IN THE MIDST OF JUDGMENT. The sin may have been forgiven though the chastisement fell. I. Hill body was p1·eserved from duihonour. The lion's ferocity was bridled; the prophet's body was neither eaten nor torn; he guarded the remains from the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. (1) Though God chastises His erring people He will not utterly cast them away. (2) The fiercest instruments of His vengeanc; can go only so far as He permits them. 2. The message he had borne received added weight by his punishment. In his humiliation God was exalted. The circumstances showed that the blow was from the hand of God, and the question was no doubt raised in many a heart, if the Lord has so punished His servant's error, what will Israel's judgment be ? 3. He still preached in his grave. He was bnried near the altar, and over his tomb was graven the story of his mission and his fate (2 Kings x:riii. 17). II. THE PUNISHMENT OF UNFAITHFULNESS. When all has been said that can be of the attendant mercy, the judgment still stands ont in terribleness. The prophet still preached, but the cry came up from the dark pathway of death. His place was not among the vessels of mercy, but among the vessels of wrath. If we eat in idolatrous Bethel, even though it be in ignorance, God's hand will find us. He pnnishes now in spiritual leanness, and that again leads to deeper judgment; in the falling away of our children into indifference and worldliness and sin, and will not God demand their blood at onr hand 'l God will have perfect compliance in regard to the conduct of His own worship; He demands "a pure offering." ~ewe making His word our only law? Whose altar are we serving, Jehovah's or Jeroboam's? III. BETHEL'S ANSWER TO Gon's WARNINGS. 1. The prophet's fear. (lJ He owned God's servant. He cared for his body, mourned over him with the cry, 11 Alas my brother I " placed him in his own tomb and had his own bones laid beside those of the man of God. (2) He lifted up again God's testimony (var. 32). The beginning of a better thing in Bethel is ever after this fashion: the honouring Gocl's servants, cleaving to them, and continuing their work. 2. The king's unconcern. We a.re not told that he did anything worse than he had done before; he simply "returned not from his evil way." And this became sin to his house, to cut it off and to destroy it, &c. To bring upon onrselves God's judgments we need do no more than tnrn a deaf ear to His warnings.-J. U.
EXPOSITION.
CHAPTER XIV. 1-20. his firstbom. We can hardly regard this as a part of the discipline designed to Trrn DEATH OF JEBOBOill'S SON,-The reform the king, and so avert the schism, protest of the prophet of Judah, the signs for the narrative distinctly conveys the im- which supported it, and above all the pression that Jeroboam's day of grace was eolemn visitation, with its strange portents, past, and that judgment was alrendy begun. which straightway followed it, having alike Moreover, these events would seem to belong failed to arrest Jeroboam (eh. xiii. 33) in to a much later period than that of which his high-handed and shameless depravation the preceding chapter treats-a periocl, of the true religion, we now read of the indeed, not far distant from the close of retribution which came upon his family, and Jeroboam's reign. He then heard, as was which liege.n with the sickness and death of fitting, from the venerable prophet who had tlit. XIV, 1-20.] TlIE FIRST BOOK OF KINGS. 813