from the dependent poor. Let it be in overcharged dues or in underpaid work, in every oase the luxury that forces on the demand is responsible for the evils of the enforced supply. "Those at ease often know not that their luxuries are continually watered by the tears of the poor . . . but God counts wilful ignore.nee no excuse" (Pusey). Hood's stanza, addressed to men, is doubly pertinent to women. • 0 men with sisters dear I 0 men with mothers and wives I It is not linen you're wee.ring out, But human creatures' lives." The self-indulgence of the women of Israel meant really the grinding of the poor, out of whose poverty "their lords" were: driven to wring the means of carrying on their shameful excesses. 2. They encouraged their husbands in self-mdul,genu. " Bring, and let us drink." This was a doubling of the evil. They not only did wrong, but tempted others to do it. They wasted much, and procured the wasting of more. They were at pains to increase the number of harpies who would gorge themselves on the hard earnings of tbe poor. 3. This was not an isolated act, but a habit. "Oppress " is equivalent to" are continually oppressing." Luxury had settled into a chronic social evil. The demand for fuel to feed the fire of indulgence was constant. It was a cancer eating out the well-being of society continually, and devouring, generation after generation, the inheritance of the poor. The evil of it smelled rank to Heaven, and the guilt of it clamoured for punishment. III. Goo's OUTRAGED PEBl"ECTIONB ABE THE GUARANTEE OF THE SINNER'S PUNISH- MENT. "The Lord Jehovah bath sworn by his holiness." The oc=ions of God's action are often supplied by men, but the grounds of it are in himself-in the perfections of his character and the purposes of his will. 1. Holiness is God's characteristic quality. There is a universal ascription of it to him in Scripture (Exod. xv. 11; Isa. vi 1-3; lvii 15; Hab. i. 13). Absolutely his" name is holy;" relatively he is the "Holy One of Israel." This holiness is an infinite contrariety to all that is morally impure. It characterizes all his other perfections, and is, in this aspect, not so much a distinct attribute as the blending together of them all. Administratively, he swears by bis holiness, and sits upon the throne of his holiness (Ps. l:u.xix. 35; xlvii. 8); believers are the people of hie holiness, and heaven the habitation of his holiness (lea. I.xiii. 18, 16); whilst a synonym for the consecrated life is "holiness to the Lord." 2. God's holiness was the quality specially profaned. (Ch. ii. 7.) It was to profane bis holy Name that they bad sinned. The perfection specially sinned against is naturally the one to be vindicated. "He pledges his own holiness that he will avenge their unholiness" (Pusey). Jealous of all his perfections, the one our conduct tends to obscure or hurt is the one God will most emphatically illustrate and glorify. 3. Holiness is the quality that malces punishment of sin inevitable. It is the recoil of God's infinitely pure nature from moral evil. It is the expression and sum of an essential and external antagonism to it. It is incompatible with impurity as light is with darkness, and its necessary and natural action toward it is destructive. Funda- mentally it is becanse God is holy that be punishes, and must punish, sin. IV, THE SINNER'S PUNISHMENT WHEN IT COMES WILL MATCH AND SQUARE WITH HIS BIN. (Vers. 2, 3.) Here the dovetailing of retribution with crime is very complete. There would be: 1. Deportation from l=urious scenes. "I will take you a.way." The indulgences become habitual would be violently interrupted. The luxurious and vicious tastes, developed into tremendous strength by long-continued sensuality, would be deprived of their gratification. Instead of the high living, become by long enjoy- ment a thing of course, and a necessity of their life, they would have the coarse and scanty fare of slaves. 'l'o visit with want and bondage, when habits of rule and luxury have become a second nature, is a judgment bitterly felt. 2. This ln a violent and painful manner. "With hooks." The figure is drawn from fishing. The drawing out of the fish by means of a hook is always painful, and is rendered doubly so by its resistance. Bo with the soft and delicately nurtured women of Samaria in the hands of a rough and brutal soldiery. T~ey would ~uffer as a fish transfixed ~y a barbed hook, and their former luxury would be m a sense its own avenger. 3. Thu to the last ona. •• And your last one with fish-hooks." Not one should escape. God's judgments are All:08, • THE DOOK OF .!.MOS. [OH, IV. 1-13.
rarticular. He does not visit people in the. mass, but individuals, Not a cow but w,,uld feel the cut oft.he drover's whip, and experience the famine-pangs of.the,ecanty rasture. 4. Thu in connection with tlwir own lusts as a'UXiliaries. The hook that d.raws out the fiFh has been baited for it, and voluntarily swallowed1 though under a wrong inpre~sion. ln heathen luxury and dissolution the Hebrew women found a bait ,..•. hicb they swallowed greedily. Now they should find that, with the bait, they had swallowed also a cruel hook, which would draw them away to suffer evils worse than th_ey had themselves inflicted. "A.nd be cast away to Harman" (Authorized Version, "mt-0 the palace"), i.e. probably Armenia (see Pusey). Here, being used to minister to heathenish luxury and lust, they would be victims in the matter in which they had been so long the victimizers of others. There is a nameless cruelty in debauohery, which only tile victims of it know. This, with the added burden of heathen horrors, ihe delicate and pampered Israelitish women would now suffer. Their punishment would rls~ upon them in familiar shape, the resurrection of their own sin. 6. The bovine stolidity of their prosperous days woul,d make them helpless as driven cattui in the day ,;f calamity. "In the wall ye shall go out every one before her," i.e." as a herd of cows go one after another through a gap in the fence" (Pusey). The level of intelligence goes down with the level of morality. The penalty of living the brutes' life of sense is a weakening of the heavenly gift of reason, by which we are distinguished from them.