n&me 0f the Chemarims with the priests; and them tha.t worship the host oF hel\ven upon the house-tops." The remains of Baal-worship, whiqh as yet Josiah wl\s unable utterly to eradic&te in remoter places. Baal was the Phrenician tutelary god. His name means lord; and the feminine god corresponding and genel'l\\ly associated with him was Ashtaroth. As he was represented by the sun, so she was the goddess answering to the moon and the rest of the heavenly host. In fact, it was the worship of nature; a worship to which corresponds the pantheistic and scientific exaltation of Nature and her laws in our own days, as if God were the slave of his own world and its law~, instead of the Lord, Creator, and Sustainer, who can and will modify, alter, and ~uspend the order of the present system of things, according to his own sovereign plPa~ure, and in furtherance of the higher moral laws, in subserviency to which the laws of nature exist. From the time of the judges (Judg. ii. 18) Israel had fallen into this idolatry; and Manasseh had lately set up this idol within Jehovah's temple itself (2 Kings xxi. 3-7): "He reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove [symbol of the goddess Ashtaroth] . . . and worshipped all the host of heaven . . . And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my Name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he set a graven image of the grove [the symbol of the heavenly host] that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my Name for ever." Josiah began his reformation in the twelfth year of his reign (2 Chron. xx.xiv. 3, 4, 8), and in the eighteenth had as far as possible completed it. " And the name of the Chemarims with the priests." These chemarim were in all probability subordinate ministers of the idolatrous priests, and their duty was 'to assist them at the altar. "Them that worship the host of heaven upon the house-tops." The houses in the East had flat roofs, open to the heavens, and there the worship was per• formed. Idolatry is one of the great sins of the world ; it is confined to no age or land. Its spirit is loving the creature more than the Creator. (2) Backsliding.· "'l'hem that are turned back from the Lord." Indeed, idola~ry is an apostasy, and so is all sin. All sin is a going back from the Lord. "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cist.em~, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jer. ii. 13). (3) Indi.fferentism. "And those that have not sought the Lord, nor inquired for him." This is· the most prevalent of :i.11 sins, and is one of the great roots of .all immol'B:lities-an utter neglect of religion. Religious indifferentistn is the great sin of England to-day. God and his claims are everywhere practically ignored. This indifferentism, like a vast pool of mud, generates all that is morally noxious, pernicious, and vile in our midst. 2. The exclusive prerogative of God. What is that? 'l'o destroy. "I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast ; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling- blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord." (1) No one can really destroy but God, "I kill, and I make alive." Annihilation is as far behind the power of the creature as ia the work of creation. Man may ctush the forms of things, but the essences lie infinitely beyond his touch. (2) God has a right to destroy human life. He has a right because it belongil to him. He has a right because through sin it has forfeited its existence. (3) His destructive work is as beneficent as his sustainiog and creating. Destruction is a principle in all nature; one plant destroys another, one animal destroys another, and there -are elements in nature whose work is destruction. From destruction new life and beauty come; destruction keeps the universe alive, fresh, and healthy.-D; 'I'.
? ers. 7-18.-The day of war the day of horrors. "Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord." These verses present a graphic and soul-stirring description of the horrid day of war which was about to dawn on the Hebrew land. It is called a" day of wrath," a "day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers." No more awful day than the day of wn.r. It is a day when fiends are released from prison and let loose on earth. Tl.ie war-day is represented here- orr. I. 1-18.) THE BOOK OF ZEPHANIAH. 23