Vers. 8, 9.-A call to understanding. The former verse exhibits Ephraim bringing forth the fruits of repentance, abandoning idolatry for ever. God on his part hears his prayers, grants his petitions, and makes him the object of his paternal care and kind providence. Nor is that all; he becomes to him refreshment in every time of need, and the source of fruitfulness at all times. It is the part of understanding and the privilege of the prudent to devote due attention to and to attain to proper discernment of such things. By the judicious exercise 6f their natural powers, quickened and strengthened by grace, they convince themselves of the rightness and justness of God's ways, and continne, to their own unspeakable comfort, to walk therein; but trans- gressors stumble at God's dealings and fall into the perdition of ungodly men.
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-3.-Return to God: its beginnings. The long and terrible storm of denun- ciation is now at last over; the wrath-clouds roll away, and th·e 'sunshine of the Divine love bursts forth with healing in its wings: Beyond all the hurly-burly of the tempest sent as the punishment of sin, the prophet discerns the paternal tenderness and the loving patience of the God of Israel. So he begins this closing chapter of his book with a last tender entreaty to return to him who " sitteth upon the flood," and who "will hless bis people with peace." How changed the prophet's style, in this final ~trophe, from what it is in most of the preceding! When denouncing Ephraim's sin and doom Hosea is obscure, abrupt, rugged. and volcanic; 1 but in eh. xiv. all is pellucid· and restful and full of beauty. The whirlwind and the earthquake and the fire have given place to the still small voice. 'l'he subject in these opening verses is-The beginnings of spiritual revival In its rise there are three stages. I. THE LoRD BE8EECHING. (Ver. 1.) As appliP.d to Israel, the exhortation ·has for its background all the judgments which have been threatened throughout the Book. And since these words were written Israel "has fallen" indeed. The ten tribes were 110on carried into Assyr',a; Judah was by-and-by driven away to weep beside the rivers of Babylon; regained Jerusalem was at length fiercely overthrown by the Romans; and for eighreen centuries now the Jews have been dispersed over the wide world, and exposed to reproach and persecution and cruelty. All this has been the punishment of Israel's own "iniquity "-the political schism, the calf-worship, the Baalism, the god.less pride, the unblushing immorality, and at last the rejection and murder of the Son of God. Jehovah could not avoid punishing; he could not but allow the apostate on. XIV. 1-D.] THE BOOK OF HOSEA. 443