the carnalising tendency, and secure for it a higher good.

But the incompetency on the part of the house of David to bear the glory to which it had been exalted, had its counterpart among a large portion of the people, in their insensibility to the honour of having a visible representative of the most high God reigning over them, and their disposition to view the kingdom in the light of a mere human institution. Great pains had been taken by Samuel at the period of its institution to elevate the people's notions respecting it; and David, during his lifetime, had also exerted himself to the uttermost to give the kingly government a divine aspect in the eyes of the people, and awaken that higher and fuller development of the divine life, which it was the special calling of the Lord's anointed to foster and promote among the tribes of his inheritance. This David did partly by the vigour and righteousness of his administration, which ever had mainly at heart the interests of truth and piety; partly also by the new life and power which he infused into the tabernacle worship; and finally, by the composition and destination to public use of those divine songs, which were not more adapted to beget and nourish a spirit of devotion, than to identify in the minds of the people the peculiar glory of their nation with the royal dignity and blessed administration of David's house. Still, the people as a whole never became thoroughly adjusted to the constitution under which they were placed. They wanted spiritual discernment

and faith to enter into the plan of God, and to realise their own honour in the honour of the house of David. A large proportion of them viewed its exaltation with a carnal and envious eye, and bore with impatience the yoke of its authority; for which, doubtless, the selfish and worldly spirit that so early appeared in that house itself furnished too ready an excuse. Therefore, on both accounts-both as a necessary chastisement and humiliation to the house of David, and as the most appropriate way of administering a wholesome discipline and instruction to the people—the Lord saw it needful to disturb and weaken the commonwealth for a time, by the erection within it of a separate kingdom. Happy if both parties had understood that this device was sanctioned only as a temporary expedient, a grievous evil in itself, though intended to work out an ultimate good, and an evil which, so long as it lasted, inevitably prevented the full inheritance of blessing which God had promised to bestow. This, however, they failed to do. The breach, instead of leading to true repentance for sin, and from that to mutual reconciliation on higher grounds, became perpetually wider and deeper. And those who attained to power in the new kingdom of Israel, were plainly bent on nothing more than on establishing their total independence of the house of David and the kingdom of Judah.

It was not against this, however, the civil aspect of the evil, that the prophets in the kingdom of Israel struggled, or were called directly to interfere. They

had to do only with the religious change, by which it was soon followed, and which had in no respect the sanction of God; but, on the contrary, his uncompromising resistance and severe reprobation. While he in some sense authorized Jeroboam to erect the ten tribes into a separate kingdom, he gave him no permission to institute within its borders a separate worship; and to throw, if possible, an effectual bar against any attempt in that direction, he caused Ahijah twice in the original message to Jeroboam, to declare Jerusalem to be the one place he had chosen, in which to put his name.-(1 Kings xi. 32, 36.) Motives of worldly policy, however, induced Jeroboam to disregard this plain intimation of the divine will, and to set up a separate worship. For, he naturally imagined, that if the people of his kingdom should continue to go up to Jerusalem at the stated feasts, their hearts in process of time would be won back to the house of David, to the prejudice of his own family, and the ultimate overthrow of his kingdom. And so, pretending to a considerate regard for the comfort and convenience of the people—that it was too far for them to travel to Jerusalem-he consecrated two sanctuaries with their respective altars, the one at Bethel in the south, the other at Dan in the north. With these also he connected two golden calves, which were apparently designed to hold the same relative place to the sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel, that the ark of the covenant did to the temple at Jerusalem; were designed, in short, to serve (after

the manner of Egypt, where Jeroboam had spent many years of his life) as proper and becoming symbols of the true God. But such innovations were too palpably opposed to the law of Moses to meet with the approval of the priesthood; who therefore, with one consent, refused to enter the sanctuaries of Jeroboam, and minister at his altars. Their refusal, however, only led to another flagrant violation of the Mosaic constitution; for Jeroboam, still determined to adhere to his wretched policy, took and consecrated for priests of the vilest of the people-men needy in circumstances and worthless in character-entirely fitted to act the part of obsequious ministers to the royal will. Thus the religion introduced into the kingdom of Israel in four most essential particulars— its sanctuaries, altars, symbols of worship, and ministering priesthood-bore on it an earthly image and superscription, it was polluted at the centre by the inventions of men; and though most of the rites of Judaism were still retained in it, yet "the Lord could not smell in the solemn assemblies of the people, nor accept their offerings." Besides, the religion being thus essentially changed in character, it necessarily lost its moral influence on the people;— itself now a grovelling superstition, moulded after the will of man, and administered by unclean and servile hands, it could raise no effectual bulwark against the tide of human corruption; a rapid degeneracy ensued in the general character of the nation; and this again made way, as it proceeded, for further corruptions in

worship, until at last undisguised heathenism, with its foul abominations and shameless profligacy of manners, took possession of the field.*

Such were the inevitable results of the change introduced by Jeroboam into the worship of God, which from being regarded as essential to the independence of the kingdom, was clung to ever afterwards with fatal obstinacy. But there were also certain attendant circumstances which contributed materially to accelerate the progress of the evil. Of this nature was the secession of the Priests and Levites, who went over in a body to the kingdom of Judah—thus withdrawing from the kingdom of Israel not a little of its spiritual life.-(2 Chron. xi. 13, 14.) And not only did many in Israel continue as before

* The great evil of idolatry, even in its earliest and least offensive form that is, when it does not set up a plurality of godsbut only an image or symbol through which to worship the supreme God, consists in its necessarily conveying low and debasing views of his character and glory. The mind contemplates God through the symbol, and rests in the ideas it suggests. Hence, as no symbol can adequately represent Jehovah, he can never be known and worshipped as the true God where idolatry is practised; for example, the symbol of the bovine form, or calf, as it is generally called in Scripture, was regarded in Egypt, the country of its birth, as the emblem of productiveness; it represented God as the great producer, the source of all life and sustenance, or material comfort.-(Wilkinson's Egypt, V. p. 194.) And, no doubt, the promoters of the false worship in Israel would endeavour to reconcile men to it, by asking if the representation it gave of God was not a just and honourable one? It might have been such, indeed, if the God of Israel had been merely the God of nature-the source of life and production as these exist in the external world. But there is plainly nothing