Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Micah 6:9

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 9. The Lord's voice crieth unto the city — No man is found to hear; but the man of wisdom will hear, תושיה tushiyah; a word frequent in the writings of Solomon and Job, signifying wisdom, wealth, substance, reason, essence, happiness; any thing that is complete; or that which is substantial, in opposition to vanity, emptiness, mere show, unsubstantiality. When God speaks, the man of common sense, who has any knowledge of God or his own soul, will see thy name; but instead of יראה yireh, will see, the Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate, and Arabic, with twelve of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., have read יראי yirey, they that FEAR. The Vulgate reads: -

Et salus erit timentibus nomen tuum.

"And thou shalt be salvation to them that fear thy name."

The Septuagint - Και σωσει φαβουμενους το ονομα αυτου.

And he shall save those who fear his name. - This the Arabic copies.

The Targum has, "And the teachers shall fear the name." That is, Yehovah.

The French Bible is very strange: -

Car ton nom volt comme il va de tout.

"For thy name sees how every thing goes."

The word תושיה tushiyah, mentioned above, which occasions all the difficulty, has been read with an ע ain by the Vulgate and Septuagint, as coming from the root ישע yasha, to be saved; and it is very likely that this was the original reading. The two last letters in the word, יה, might have been easily mistaken in the MS. for the letter ע where I may suppose the word stood thus, תושע, shall be saved; and as several MSS. read יראי yirey, they who fear, instead of יראה yireh, he shall see, the whole clause might have been just what it appears in the Vulgate and Septuagint. It is also necessary to remark that the word in dispute has various forms in some MSS., which is a strong presumption against its authenticity. See Kennicott and De Rossi.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

6:1-7:20 GOD ACCUSES AND THE PEOPLE REPLY

What God desires (6:1-16)

Returning to conditions in his own time, Micah pictures a courtroom where, with the heavens and earth as witnesses, God accuses his people of unfaithfulness (6:1-2). God recalls the great things he has done for them, as if asking why they treat him so badly in return (3-5).
The people’s reply shows their misunderstanding. They ask what sort of worship God wants. Does he want sacrifices that are exact according to the letter of the law? Or an increase in the number of sacrifices? Or more lavish sacrifices? Or even heathen sacrifices? If God tells them what he wants, they will try to please him (6-7).
God replies that he has already shown them (particularly through Amos, Hosea and Isaiah) what he wants, namely, justice and love towards their fellow human beings, and faithfulness and humility towards God. Correct sacrifices and enthusiastic religious exercises are of no value if the people do not have right attitudes and right conduct (8).
Micah warns that God sees the rich merchants throughout Judah’s cities and he takes note of their crooked business methods. When selling grain they use undersized measures, and when weighing the buyer’s money they use extra heavy weights. They become rich through violence, lies and trickery (9-12). God will make sure that these cheats do not enjoy the good things they have built up for themselves. Through drought, famine and enemy attacks he will destroy their dishonestly gained wealth, and finally destroy them (13-16).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

"The voice of Jehovah crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom will see thy name; hear ye, the rod, and who hath appointed it."

The translation of this, verse is doubtful, due to imperfections in the manner of the text's transmission through history; but the meaning is clear anyway. "The city is called to attention with a litany of changes, as the voice of God continues to speak to the end of the chapter."Footnote is not available As McKeating observed, the lawsuit continues in this verse. "The prosecution is resumed with an appeal this time, not to the mountains and hills, but to the populace."Henry McKeating; op. cit., p, 186. "The rod is the chastisement, or judgment, about to be made known to the people."Homer Hailey, op. cit., p. 215. The city in view here is Jerusalem, the chief city of the nation.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

The voice of the Lord crieth unto the city - that is, Jerusalem, as the metropolis of their wealth and their sin, the head and heart of their offending. “Crieth,” aloud, earnestly, intently, so that all might hear. So God says, “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding pat forth her voice? She crieth at the gates, - unto you, O men, I cry, and my voice is to the sons of men” Proverbs 8:1, Proverbs 8:3-4; and Isaiah prophesied of John the Immerser, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 3:3; and our Lord saith, “He that heareth you, heareth Me. And the man of wisdom shall see Thy Name” Luke 10:16. The voice of God is in the hearing of all, but the wise only seeth the Name of God. The word rendered “wisdom” means, “that which is,” “See ye the word of the Lord.”) They shall see His power and majesty and all which His Name expresses, as they are displayed severally in each work of His: He shall speak to them by all things wherein He is; and so seeing Him now in a glass darkly, they shall hereafter see all, His Glory, His Goodness, His Love, Himself, “face to face.”

Hear ye the rod - that is, the scourge of the wrath of God. The name and the image recall the like propecies of Isaiah, so that Micah in one word epitomises the prophecies of Isaiah, or Isaiah expands the word of Micah. “The rod in thine hand is My indignation” Isaiah 10:5; “As if the rod lifted up Him, who is not wood” Isaiah 10:15; “He lifteth up his rod against thee” Isaiah 10:24; “Thou hast broken the rod (which is) on his shoulder” (Isaiah 9:3, Hebrew); “The Lord hath broken the rod of the wicked” Isaiah 14:5; “wheron the grounded (that is, fixed by the decree of God) staff shall pass” Isaiah 30:32.

And who hath appointed it - that is, beforehand, fixing the time and place, when and where it should come. So Jeremiah says, “How canst thou (sword of the Lord) be quiet, and the Lord hath given it a charge to Ashkelon and to the seashore? there hath He appointed it” Jeremiah 47:7. He who has “appointed it,” changeth not His decree, unless man changeth; nor is He lacking in power to fulfill it. He will surely bring it to pass. All which can be thought of, of fear, terror, motives to repentance, awe, hope, trust, is in that word “who.” It is God; hopes and fears may be infinite.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

The Prophet complains here that he and other teachers did but little, though their cry resounded and was heard by the whole people. He therefore says, that the voice of God cried; as though he had said that there was no excuse for ignorance, for God had indiscriminately exhorted them all to repentance. Now, since what was taught was common to them all, the Prophet deplores their perverseness, for very few were attentive; and the fable was sung, according to the proverb, to the deaf. We must then notice the word cry; the voice of God, he says, crieth. God did not whisper in the ear of one or two, but he designed his voice to be heard by all from the least to the greatest. The Prophets then did cry loud enough, but there were no ears to hear them.

We may take the word לעיר, laoir, in two ways. עיר, oir, means a city. But some derive it from עור, our, and render it as if it were written להעיר, laeoir. If ה, he is put in, it must be rendered, To rouse; and the letter ה, he, may be concealed under the point chamets; and this sense would be the most suitable, The voice of Jehovah cries to arouse or awaken; that is though the people are torpid, and as it were overpowered with sleep, for they indulged themselves in their sins; yet the voice of God ought to be sufficient to arouse them all: however sleepy they might have been, there was yet power enough in the doctrine of the Law, which the Prophet daily proclaimed. But still this voice, by which the whole people ought to have been awakened, was not heard!

The man of understanding, he says will see thy name The word תושיה, tushie, means properly understanding, as it is clear from many other passages; but the Prophet means that there was a very small number who were teachable; and he calls them men of understanding. At the same time, he indirectly reproves the sottishness of the people, though they all boasted that they were wise, and boasted also that they were the learners of the Law. The Prophet shows here by implication, that understanding was a rare thing among that people; for few hearkened to the voice of God. And thus we see what his object was; for he wished to touch the Jews to the quick, that they might acknowledge that they were without mind and understanding, because they had hardened themselves against God, so that his voice did not reach their hearts. He therefore shows that they were all besides themselves; for had they any right understanding, they would have hearkened to God speaking to them, as they were his disciples. What indeed could have been more strange, nay more inhuman, than for men to reject the doctrine of their salvation, and to turn aside from hearing even God himself? Thus the madness of the people was reproved; for though the voice of God sounded in the ears of them all, it was not yet listened to.

If one prefers reading, In the city, then no doubt the Prophet means, that the voice of God was proclaimed through all the cities: for to confine it, as some interpreters do, to Jerusalem, or to Samaria, appears frigid. We must then understand a change of number, and take city for any large concourse of people; as though he had said, that there was no city in which God did not cry and yet that there were ears no where.

It afterwards follows, Shall see thy name. Some render it, Shall fear, ⁽¹⁷¹⁾ as though it was from ירא, ira; but it comes on the contrary from ראה, rae; and rules of grammar will not allow it to be viewed otherwise. And the Prophet speaks in a striking manner, when he says, that the intelligent man seeth the name of God. For whence proceeded the contempt of wicked men, so that they disregarded the voice of God, except from this — that his majesty had no effect on them; that is, they did not acknowledge that they had to do with God? For if they really understood what I have said, — that God spoke to them, his majesty would have immediately come to view, it would have arrested all their thoughts. God then would have constrained even the most heedless to fear him, had it not been, that they imagined the voice which sounded in their ears was that of man. Significantly then does the Prophet say, that it was the act of singular prudence to see the name of God, that is to understand from whom the doctrine proceeded. For as soon as we hearken to God, his majesty, as I have said, must so penetrate all our thoughts, as to humble us before him, and to constrain us to do him homage. The contempt then of spiritual doctrine, and also the perverseness of ungodly men, proceed from this, — that they see not the name of God, that they understand not that it is his name.

He afterwards adds, Hear ye the rod, and him who proclaims it to you By rod he means threatening; as though he said, — “Your arrogance in mocking God shall not go unpunished, as though his voice were an empty sound: there is then no reason for you to deceive yourselves with the hope of impunity; for God will avenge the contempt of his word.” Now the Prophet’s design was, to denounce an approaching vengeance on those who came not willingly to God, and received not his word with genuine docility of mind. Whenever, then, men despise the voice of God, as though it proceeded only from a mortal being, on such Micah denounces an impending vengeance; for the contempt of his word is a thing intolerable to God. This is the reason why he immediately adds, after having complained of the contempt of his word, that vengeance was not afar off; Hear ye then the rod, and who declares or testifies concerning it

This last clause ought to be especially noticed; for the ungodly are not terrified when God declares that he will be an avenger, because they think not that they must give an account of their life, or they look only on mortal man, “Ah! who speaks? Is he indeed our God? Is he armed with celestial power? Do we not see a mortal man and one like ourselves?” We daily see that the ungodly do thus cast away every fear, and willfully harden themselves against God’s judgments. It is not then without reason that the Prophet bids the Jews seriously to consider who testifies of the rod; as though he said, — “I indeed confess that I am a mortal man, but remember who has sent me; for I go not forth as a private individual, nor have I presumptuously intruded into this office; but I am armed with God’s command; nay, God himself speaks through my mouth. If then ye despise me, the Lord is present, who will vindicate his own commands for he will not suffer himself to be despised in his servants though they may be contemptible according to the flesh, he will yet have the reverence which it deserves to be paid to his word.” We now perceive the real meaning of the Prophet. It now follows —

(171) And so Newcome renders it, and there are a few copies in favor of this reading, in which יראי is found: but a fact of this kind is not sufficient to make a change, except there will be other reasons. And then in the next line there is a change made, without the authority of one MS. Indeed these two lines are rendered as though the Archbishop had another text; and indeed it is another: his version is this, —

And there is a sound wisdom with them that fear his name:
Hear, O ye tribes, him that testifieth.

This version is partly derived from the Septuagint; which could not have been wholly followed, as it differs so widely from the Hebrew, and hardly presents any meaning. There is far more correspondence in the passage, as it is rendered in our version, and by Calvin, and also by Henderson; and the Hebrew is closely followed. Drusius and others agree with Calvin, that תושיה, which is rendered often “sound wisdom,” is to be taken here as concrete, signifying a wise man. מטה is evidently the rod of correction, and is used in this sense in Isaiah 10:5; and it is more consistent with the whole passage to consider יעדה as a future, construed, as in the present tense, with an affix, from עד, to testify, than from יעד to appoint, — “Hear ye the rod,” the chastening rod, “and who testifies of it.” Newcome viewed it as being this verb; but he takes no notice of its affix ה, which refers to the rod, by which chastisement is signified. — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 6

Hear ye now what the LORD says; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD'S controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. O my people ( Micah 6:1-3 ),

Still His people after all of this.

what have I done unto you? ( Micah 6:3 )

And listen to God's pleading with the people. God says, "What have I done? What have I done wrong? What have I done against you?"

and wherein have I wearied you? ( Micah 6:3 )

Go ahead and tell Me, witness against Me, give a testimony against Me. What have I done? Where have I wearied you?

For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and I redeemed you out of the house of servants ( Micah 6:4 );

I took you from bondage and from slavery. You were nothing but a bunch of slaves.

and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the LORD ( Micah 6:4-5 ).

Now he says, now go back and read the prophecies of Balaam when Balak the king said, "Come and curse these people." And so he said, "Built me an altar," and he built an altar. And as he began to look over tents of Jacob he began to declare, "O how beautiful are the tents of Jacob. O how glorious is their redeemer. O that I may die the death of Jacob." And he began to declare the glory. And the king said, "Shut up. I don't want you to bless them. I want you to curse them." And he took them to another mountain, built another altar. He said, "Go back and read what I had to say about you. Read the blessings that I declared concerning you." And God is saying go back and read them. So you ought to go back when you get home tonight in Numbers and read the prophecies of Balaam concerning Israel.

O my people, remember now the words that were spoken through Balaam; that you may know how righteous I have been towards you. Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? ( Micah 6:5-6 )

"How can I approach God?" the prophet is saying.

Will the LORD be pleased if I should offer a thousand rams, or ten thousand of rivers of oil? ( Micah 6:7 )

What can I offer to God as a sacrifice for all of God's blessings and goodness?

shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? ( Micah 6:7 )

Should I offer my own son to God? What can I do? What does God want of me? What does God require of me?

And the prophet answers,

He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, just to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? ( Micah 6:8 )

You say, "Well, that doesn't sound so bad." But look at it again. God requires that you do justly. Have you always done the right thing? Have you always been fair and honest? Have you never cheated in a deal? Have you never concealed or hid a part of the truth? Well, scratch that one off.

To love mercy; do you really love mercy? Do you really love to just forgive and say, "Oh, forget it. It doesn't really matter. That's all right." Or, do you love to get even? Do you go around saying, "I'll get even with him if it's the last thing I do. You just wait. I'll get even."

and to walk humbly with thy God? ( Micah 6:8 )

"Six things God hates; yea, there are seven that are an abomination (now I don't really know what an abomination is, but it sounds bad) unto Him" ( Proverbs 6:16 ). Top of the list of the things that God hates that are an abomination, at the top of the list is a proud look. "Pride goes before destruction," the Lord said, "and a haughty spirit before a fall" ( Proverbs 16:18 ). God hates the pride of men. God wants you to walk humbly with Him. That is what God requires. That is what God insists upon, but I have failed. I have not walked humbly before the Lord. I have not loved mercy. I have not done justly. What does God want? A thousand rams, rivers of oil? What can I give to God? What does God want from me? What does God require? He doesn't require a thousand rams. He doesn't require rivers of oil to be offered in sacrifice. All He says is, "Hey, I've shown you the good way. It is: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly." Well, Lord, I can't even do that. What now do You require?

They came to Jesus and said, "What must we do to do the works of God?" And Jesus said, "This is the work of God: just believe on Him whom He has sent" ( John 6:29 ). All right, I can handle that. That I can do. This is the work of God: that you believe on Him whom He has sent. So God's actual requirement for us tonight is just to believe in His Son Jesus Christ as our own Lord and Savior. And by your believing in Him, He will come into your life. He will begin to indwell your life and He will begin to give you the power to do justly. He will begin to transform your heart to where you'll love mercy. And as you look upon His face, there is no way you could be proud, but you'll walk humbly before the Lord. So God's requirements.

The prophet is crying out, "What can I do? Does God want me to give Him my first-born son, rivers of oil, whatever? What does God require?" And the Lord answers, "He has shown thee O man what is good. This is what God requires."

The LORD'S voice cries unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it. Are there not yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, does God hate the scant measure that is abominable? ( Micah 6:9-10 )

I was reading one time where a baker filed a suit against a farmer in court in England. And in his suit he charged that the farmer was continually giving him less butter as he sold it to him. He said, "When he first started out selling me butter he gave me a true pound of butter, but gradually he has been giving me less and less butter for the pound, until now he is only giving me about twelve ounces of butter and charging me for a pound." The farmer in his own defense said to the judge, "Sir, I only have balance scales to measure the butter." And he said, "I always take the baker's pound loaf of bread and put it on the scale to weigh the butter." God speaks here against the scant measures that are an abomination unto him.

And then those that have a bag full of deceitful weights. Now they used the balance scales and they had deceitful weights. They had one set of weights that they would buy with and another set that they would sell with; deceitful weights, bag full of deceitful weights. God says, "I hate that." Dishonesty in dealing with our brothers. What a violation that is to the law of God where Jesus said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." What a violation to that law to cheat or to defraud my brother, to use deceitfulness in dealing with him.

For the rich men are full of violence [he declares], and the inhabitants have spoken lies, their tongues are deceitful. Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, and in making thee desolate because of your sins. You will eat, but not be satisfied ( Micah 6:12-14 );

And how true this is of a man who gives himself over to unbridled lust; he eats, but he is never satisfied.

and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but you will not deliver; and that which you delivered you will give up to the sword. For you will sow, but you will not reap ( Micah 6:14-15 );

Someone else will reap the benefits of all of your efforts and work.

thou shalt tread the olives, that they shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but you will not drink it. For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab ( Micah 6:15-16 ),

Omri and Ahab, the two wicked kings of Israel that led the people into such abominable practices and sins.

But you're walking in their counsels ( Micah 6:16 );

You're following after their ways.

that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing: therefore shall ye bear the reproach of my people ( Micah 6:16 ).

A sign of great disdain was just hissssss. They wanted to show just utter disdain for people, they would just hiss at them just like you do a cat, hiss. So it showed a sign of total disdain and God said, "You will become a hissing. People will see you and they'll just hiss at you. They'll just give you the 'ol hiss." It is sort of an irritating thing to have a person do that to you. They still do it. I've had them do it to me over there in Israel. They'll hiss at you if you don't buy their merchandise and you go to leave and they're angry with you and they'll hiss at you. They'll also spit, and that too is a sign of great disdain. In the Oriental customs if you want to show total disdain, you spit on a person. Of course, I guess that would show disdain here too, but we're a little more cultured. "

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Micah announced that Yahweh would call to the city of Jerusalem; He would declare something important to the people of that town, Micah’s audience of Judeans. They would be wise to hear Him and to fear Him because of who He is (cf. Micah 6:1; Micah 3:1; Proverbs 1:7). The Lord summoned His people, the tribe of Judah, to hear Him because it was He who had sovereignly chosen them.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

1. Israel’s sins 6:9-12

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

C. The Lord’s sentence of judgment 6:9-16

The Lord became specific about Israel’s sins, as a prosecuting attorney, and then announced His verdict, as a judge.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

The Lord's voice crieth unto the city,.... The Lord having bid his prophet call to the mountains and hills to hear his voice, and the prophet having obeyed his will, and the Lord having by him addressed his people Israel, and expostulated with them about their ingratitude, observing to them many instances of his goodness; here informs them, that this voice of his, whether in his prophet, or in his judgments, was directed to the city, either Samaria or Jerusalem, or both, and even to all the cities of Israel and Judah, the singular being put for the plural; that is, to the inhabitants of them. Cities being populous, and where persons of the highest rank and figure, as well as of the best sense, dwell, and generally very wicked, though favoured with greater advantages; all which are reasons why the voice of the Lord, in his word and providences, particularly cries to them to repent of their sins, and reform from them, as might be expected from such persons; and so doing would set a good example to those who live in the country. Some render it, "the Lord's voice crieth to awake" f; or to "stir up"; it calls upon men asleep to awake out of sleep; to arouse from their carnal security; to attend to their sins, their danger, and their duty; to repent of their sins, and so avoid the danger they were in through them, and perform their duty they had such a voice as this, see in Ephesians 5:14; this reading of the words is mentioned by Kimchi;

and [the man of] wisdom shall see thy name; not the mere natural man, or who is possessed only of natural wisdom, though he may have ever so great a share of it; for as he sees not the things of the Spirit of God, the things of the Gospel, so neither the name and perfections of God in his judgments on the earth; much less the man that is wise to do evil, full of wicked subtlety, and makes a jest of everything religious and serious; nor such as are wise in their own opinion, or have only a superficial share of wisdom; but such who have a share of solid and substantial wisdom, a man of "substance", as the word g sometimes signifies; see Proverbs 8:21; such who have true wisdom in the hidden part, that which comes from above, and is pure and peaceable, and makes men wise to salvation; such men see and discern the power and providence of God in all the judgments that are in the earth; his attributes and perfections; his severity on some, and goodness to others; his sparing grace and mercy, and his special lovingkindness, and even all his perfections, for he is known to such by the judgments he executeth; see Psalms 9:16; and such, "fear" his "name" also, as some render the words h; they not only fear the Lord and his goodness, but have an awful sense of his judgments, and tremble at them. Some read the words, "thy name sees that which is" i; so the margin of our Bibles; that is, the Lord seeth that which is done in the city, though ever so secret and private, and therefore his voice cries to it;

hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it; these are the words of the man of wisdom, as Kimchi observes; who, seeing the name and perfections of God in his judgments on the earth, upon others, and exhorts them to hear the voice rod, of the rod of correction and affliction, the rod of judgment and vengeance, as held in the hand of God, and shook over a city or nation; which has a voice in if to men, reproving them for their sins; commanding them to return from them; calling them to repentance and humiliation; teaching and instructing them in their duty; and giving cautions and warnings to others, lest the like should befall them; and this is the voice that is to be attended to: audit should be considered, that there is no affliction, calamity, or judgment, but is appointed by the Lord, the kind and nature, measure and duration, of it; what its end, issue, and use; and he that has appointed it is all wise and all knowing, unchangeable and invariable, all powerful, and able to put his purposes and decrees into execution; nor can they be frustrated. The Targum of the whole is,

"with the voice the prophets of the Lord Cry to the city; and teachers fear the name (of the Lord); hear, O king and rulers, and the rest of the people of the land.''

f לעיר "ad suscitandum", Vatablus; "ad expergefaciendum", Calvin; "ad excitandum", Drusius. So Joseph Kimchi. g תושיה "vir constans", Pagninus; "vir essentilae", Gualtherus apud Tarnovium. h יראה שמך "timebit nomen tuum", Pagninus, Montanus. So the Targum. i "Nam quod res est, videt nomen tuum", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Tarnovius.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      9 The LORD's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.   10 Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?   11 Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?   12 For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.   13 Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.   14 Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but shalt not deliver; and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.   15 Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.   16 For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof a hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.

      God, having shown them how necessary it was that they should do justly, here shows them how plain it was that they had done unjustly; and since they submitted not to his controversy, nor went the right way to have it taken up, here he proceeds in it. Observe,

      I. How the action is entered against them, Micah 6:9; Micah 6:9. God speaks to the city, to Jerusalem, to Samaria. His voice cries to it by his servants the prophets who were to cry aloud and not spare. Note, The voice of the prophets is the Lord's voice, and that cries to the city, cries to the country. Doth not wisdom cry?Proverbs 8:1. When the sin of a city cries to God his voice cries against the city; and, when the judgments of God are coming upon a city, his voice first cries unto it. He warns before he wounds, because he is not willing that any should perish. Now observe, 1. How the voice of God is discerned by some: The man of wisdom will see thy name. When the voice of God cries to us we may by it see his name, may discern and perceive that by which he makes himself known. Yet many see it not, are not aware of it, because they do not regard it. God speaks once, yea, twice, and they perceive it not (Job 33:14); but those that are men of wisdom will see it, and perceive it, and make a good use of it. Note, It is a point of true wisdom to discover the name of God in the voice of God, and to learn what he is from what he says. Wisdom shall see thy name, for the knowledge of the holy is understanding. 2. What this voice of God says to all: "Hear you the rod, and who hath appointed it. Hear the rod when it is coming; hear it at a distance, before you see it and feel it; and be awakened to go forth to meet the Lord in the way of his judgments. Hear the rod when it has come, and is actually upon you, and you are sensible of the smart of it; hear what it says to you, what convictions, what counsels, what cautions, it speaks to you." Note, Every rod has a voice, and it is the voice of God that is to be heard in the rod of God, and it is well for those that understand the language of it, which if we would do we must have an eye to him that appointed it. Note, Every rod is appointed, of what kind it shall be, where it shall light, and how long it shall lie. God in every affliction performs the thing that is appointed for us (Job 23:14), and to him therefore we must have an eye, to him we must have an ear; we must hear what he says to us by the affliction. Hear it, and know it for thy good,Job 5:6. The work of ministers is to explain the providences of God and to quicken and direct men to learn the lessons that are taught by them.

      II. What is the ground of the action, and what are the things that are laid to their charge.

      1. They are charged with injustice, a sin against the second table. Are there yet to be found among them the marks and means of fraudulent dealing? What! after all the methods that God has taken to teach them to do justly, will they yet deal unjustly? It seems, they will, Micah 6:10; Micah 6:10. And shall I count them pure?Micah 6:11; Micah 6:11. No; this is a sin which will by no means consist with a profession of purity. Those that are dishonest in their dealings have not the spots of God's children, and shall never be reckoned pure, whatever shows of devotion they may make. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. When a man is suspected of theft, or fraud, the justice of peace will send a warrant to search his house. God here does, as it were, search the houses of those citizens, and there he finds, (1.) Treasures of wickedness, abundance of wealth, but it is ill-got, and not likely to prosper; for treasures of wickedness profit nothing. (2.) A scant measure, by which they sold to the poor, and so exacted upon them and cheated them. (3.) They had wicked balances and a bag of false weights, by which, under a pretence of weighing what they sold, and giving the buyer what was right, they did him the greatest wrong, Micah 6:11; Micah 6:11. (4.) Those that had wealth and power in their hands abused it to oppression and extortion; The rich men thereof are full of violence; for those that have much would have more, and are in a capacity of making it more by the power which their abundance of wealth gives them. They are full of violence, that is, they have their houses full of that which is got by violence. (5.) Those that had not the advantage of doing wrong by their wealth yet found means of defrauding those they dealt with: The inhabitants thereof have spoken lies; if they are not able to use force and violence, they use fraud and deceit; the inhabitants have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth; they do not stick at a deliberate lie, to make a good bargain. Some understand it of their speaking falsely concerning God, saying, The Lord seeth not; he hath forsaken the earth,Ezekiel 8:12.

      2. They are charged with idolatry (Micah 6:6; Micah 6:6): The statutes of Omri are kept, and all the work of the house of Ahab. Both these kings were wicked, and did evil in the sight of the Lord; but the wickedness which they established by a law, concerning which they made statutes, and which was the peculiar work of that house, was idolatry. Omri walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin of provoking God to anger with their vanities,1 Kings 16:26; 1 Kings 16:31. Ahab introduced the worship of Baal. These reigns were some ages before the time when this prophet lived, and yet the wickedness which they established by their laws and examples remained to this day; those statutes were still kept, and that work was still done; and the princes and people still walked in their counsels, took the same measures, and governed themselves and the people by the same politics. Observe, (1.) The same wickedness continued from one generation to another. Sin is a root of bitterness, soon planted, but not so soon plucked up again. The iniquity of former ages is often transmitted to, and entailed upon, the succeeding ones. Those that make corrupt laws, and bring in corrupt usages, are doing that which perhaps may prove the ruin of the child unborn. (2.) It was not the less evil in itself, provoking to God, and dangerous to the sinners, for its having been established and confirmed by the laws of princes, the examples of great men, and a long prescription. Though the worship of idols is enacted by the statutes of Omri, recommended by the practice of the house of Ahab, and pleads that it has been the usage of many generations, yet it is still displeasing to God and destructive to Israel; for no laws nor customs are of force against the divine command.

      III. What is the judgment given upon this. Being found guilty of these crimes, the sentence is that that which God had given them warning of (Micah 6:9; Micah 6:9) shall be brought upon them (Micah 6:13; Micah 6:13): Therefore also will I make thee sick, in smiting thee. As they had smitten the poor with the rod of their oppressions, so would God in like manner smite them, so as to make them sick, sick of the gains they had unjustly gotten, so that though they had swallowed down riches they should vomit them up again,Job 20:15. Their doom is,

      1. That what they have they shall not have any comfortable enjoyment of; it shall do them no good. They grasped at more than enough, but, when they have it, it shall not be enough to make them easy and happy. What is got by fraud and oppression cannot be kept or enjoyed with any satisfaction. (1.) Their food shall not nourish them: Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied, either because the food shall not digest, for want of God's blessing going along with it, or because the appetite shall by disease be made insatiable and still craving, the just punishment of those that were greedy of gain and enlarged their desires as hell. Men may be surfeited with the good things of this world and yet not satisfied, Ecclesiastes 5:10; Isaiah 55:2. (2.) Their country shall not harbour and protect them: "Thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee, that is, thou shalt be broken and ruined by the intestine troubles, mischiefs at home enough to cast thee down, though thou shouldst not be invaded by a foreign force." God can cast a nation down by that which is in the midst of them, can consume them by a fire in their own bowels. (3.) They shall not be able to preserve what they have from a foreign force, nor to recover what they have lost: "Thou shalt take hold of what is about to be taken from thee, but thou shalt not hold it fast, shalt catch at it, but shalt not deliver it, shalt not retrieve it." It is meant of their wives and children, that were very dear to them, which they took hold of, as resolved not to part with them, but there is no remedy, they must go into captivity. Note, What we hold closest we commonly lose soonest, and that proves least safe which is most dear. (4.) What they save for a time shall be reserved for a future and sorer stroke: That which thou deliverest out of the hand of one enemy will I give up to the sword of another enemy; for God has many arrows in his quiver; if one miss the sinner, the next shall not. (5.) What they have laboured for they shall not enjoy (Micah 6:15; Micah 6:15): "Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; it shall be blasted and withered, and there shall be nothing to reap, or an enemy shall come and reap it for himself, or thou shalt be carried into captivity, and leave it to be reaped by thou knowest not whom. Thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with oil, having no heart to make use of ornaments and refreshments when all is going to ruin. Thou shalt tread out the sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine, for many things may fall between the cup and the lip." Note, It is very grievous to be disappointed of our expectations, and not to have the pleasure of that which we have taken pains for; and this will be the just punishment of those that frustrate God's expectations from them, and answer not the cost he has been at upon them. See this threatened in the law, Leviticus 26:16; Deuteronomy 28:30; Deuteronomy 28:38, c. and compare Isaiah 62:8; Isaiah 62:9.

      2. That all they have shall at length be taken from them (Micah 6:13; Micah 6:13): Thou shalt be made desolate because of thy sins; and Micah 6:16; Micah 6:16, a desolation and a hissing. Sin makes a nation desolate; and when a people that have been famous and flourishing are made desolate it is the astonishment of some and the triumph of others; some lament it, and others hiss at it. Thus you shall bear the reproach of my people. Their being the people of God, in name and profession while they kept close to their duty and kept themselves in his love, was an honour to them, and all their neighbours thought it so; but now that they have corrupted and ruined themselves, now that their sins and God's judgments have made their land desolate, their having been once the people of God does but turn so much the more to their reproach; their enemies will say, These are the people of the Lord,Ezekiel 36:20. Note, If professors of religion ruin themselves, their ruin will be the most reproachful of any; and they in a special manner will rise at the last day to everlasting shame and contempt.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Fast-Day Service

(No. 154-55)

Micah 6:9

Held at the

CRYSTAL PALACE, SYDENHAM,

On Wednesday, October 7th, 1857, by the

REV. C. H. Spurgeon,

Being the Day appointed by Proclamation for a Solemn Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer before Almighty God: in order to obtain Pardon of our Sins, and for imploring His Blessing and Assistance on our Arms for the Restoration of Tranquillity in India.

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BRIEF INVOCATION.

O GOD, the God of heaven and of earth, we do this day pay Thee reverence, and meekly bow our heads in adoration before Thine awful throne. We are the creatures of Thine hand; Thou hast made us, and not we ourselves. It is but just and right that we should pay unto Thee our adoration. O God! we are met together in a vast congregation for a purpose which demands all the power of piety, and all the strength of prayer. Send down Thy Spirit upon Thy servant, that he, whilst trembling in weakness, may be made strong to preach Thy Word, to lead forth this people in holy prayer, and to help them in that humiliation for which this day is set apart. Come, O God, we beseech Thee; bow our hearts before Thee; instead of sackcloth and ashes give us true repentance, and hearts meekly reverent; instead of the outward guise, to which some pay their only homage, give us the inward spirit; and may we really pray, really humiliate ourselves, and really tremble before the Most High God. Sanctify this service; make it useful unto us and honorable to Thyself. And O Thou dread Supreme, unto Thee shall be the glory and the honor, world without end. Amen.

Let us now praise God by singing the first Hymn. I shall read it through; and then, perhaps, you will be kind enough to sing it through.

BEFORE Jehovah's awful throng,

Ye nations bow with sacred joy;

Know that the Lord is God alone;

He can create and he destroy.

His sovereign power, without our aid,

made us of clay and form'd us men!

And when like wand'ring sheep, we stray'd,

He brought us to his fold again.

We are his people, we his care,

Our souls and all our mortal frame;

What lasting honors shall we rear,

Almighty Maker to thy name?

We'll crowd thy gates with thankful songs,

High as the heavens our voices raise;

And earth with her ten thousand tongues,

Shall fill thy courts with sounding praise.

Wide as the world is thy command;

Vast as eternity thy love;

Firm as a rock thy truth must stand,

When rolling years shall cease to move.

EXPOSITION.

Daniel 9:1-19 .

"In the first year of Darius the Son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans;

"In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.

"And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, withfasting, and sackcloth, and ashes:

"And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments;

"We have sinned, and have committed, iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments:

"Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

"O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee.

"O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.

"To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him."

There is the first bright star which shines in the midst of the darkness of our sins. God is merciful. He is just as just as if he were not merciful. He is merciful as merciful as if he were not just, and in very deed more merciful than if he were too lenient; instead of blending a wise severity of justice with a gracious clemency of long-suffering. My brethren, we should rejoice that we have not this day to address the gods of the heathens. You have not to-day to bow down before the thundering Jove; you need not come before implacable deities, who delight in the blood of their creatures, or rather, of the creatures whom it is pretended that they have made. Our God delights in mercy, and in the deliverance of Britain from its ills. God will be as much pleased as Britain; yea, when Britain shall have forgotten it, and only the page of history shall record his mercies, God will still remember what he did for us in this day of our straits and our difficulties. As to the hope that he will help us it is a certainty. There is no fear that when we unite in prayer God will refuse to hear. It is as sure as that there is a God, that God will hear us; and if we ask him aright, the day shall come when the world shall see what Britain's God has done, and how he has heard her cry, and answered the voice of her supplications.

"Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.

"Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.

"And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under this whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem.

"As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn front our iniquities, and understand thy truth.

"Therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice.

"And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and hast gotten thee renoun, as at this day; we have sinned, we have done wickedly."

The prophet in his prayer pleads what God has done for them, as the reason why he should make bare his arm; he tells how God delivered Israel out of Egypt; and he therefore prays that God would deliver them from their present trouble. And, my brethren, not Israel itself could boast a nobler history than we, measuring it by God's bounties. We have not yet forgotten an armada scattered before the breath of heaven, scattered upon the angry deep as a trophy of what God can do to protect his favored Isle. We have not yet forgotten a fifth of November, wherein God discovered divers plots that were formed against our religion and our commonwealth. We have not yet lost the old men, whose tales of even the victories in war are still a frequent story. We remember how God swept before our armies the man who thought to make the world his dominion, who designed to cast his shoe over Britain, and make it a dependency of his kingdom. God wrought for us; he wrought with us; and he will continue to do so. He hath not left his people, and he will not leave us, but he will be with us even to the end. Cradle of liberty! Refuge of distress! Storms may rage around thee, but not upon thee, nor shall all the wrath and fury of men destroy thee, for God hath pitched his tabernacle in thy midst, and his saints are the salt in the midst of thee.

"O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us.

"Now, therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to thine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake.

"O my God, incline thins ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies.

"O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name."

And now for a few moments let us endeavor to pray:

PRAYER

UR Father, which art in heaven," we will be brief, but we will be earnest if Thou wilt help us. We have a case to spread before Thee this day. We will tell out our story, and we will pray that Thou wouldst forgive the weakness of the words in which it shall be delivered, and hear us, for Jesus' sake. O Father, Thou hast smitten this our land, not in itself, but in one of its dependencies. Thou hast allowed a mutinous spirit to break out in our armies, and Thou hast suffered men who know not Thee, who fear neither God nor man, to do deeds for which earth may well blush, and for which we, as men, desire to cover our faces before Thee. O Lord God, Thou couldst not bear the sin of Sodom; we are sure Thou canst not endure the sin which has been committed in India. Thou didst rain hell out of heaven upon the cities of the plain. The cities of Inde are not less vile than they, for they have committed lust and cruelty, and have much sinned against the Lord. Remember this, O God of Heaven.

But, O Lord our God, we are not here to be the accusers of our fellow-man; we are here to pray that Thou wouldst remove the scourge which this great wickedness has brought upon us. Look down from heaven, O God, and behold this day the slaughtered thousands of our countrymen. Behold the wives, the daughters of Britain, violated, defiled! Behold her sons, cut in pieces and tormented in a manner which earth hath not beheld before. O God, free us, we beseech Thee, from this awful scourge! Give strength to our soldiers to execute upon the criminals the sentence which justice dictates; and then, by Thy strong arm, and by Thy terrible might, do Thou prevent a repetition of so fearful an outrage.

We pray Thee, remember this day the widow and the fatherless children; think Thou of those who are this day distressed even to the uttermost. Guide the hearts of this great multitude, that they may liberally give and this day bestow of their substance to their poor destitute brethren. Remember especially our soldiers, now fighting in that land. God shield them! Be Thou a covert from the heat! Wilt Thou be pleased to mitigate all the rigours of the climate for them! Lead them on to battle; cheer their hearts; bid them remember that they are not warriors merely, but executioners; and may they go with steady tramp to the battle, believing that God wills it that they should utterly destroy the enemy, who have not only defied Britain, but thus defiled themselves amongst men.

But, O Lord, it is ours this day to humble ourselves before Thee. We are a sinful nation; we confess the sins of our governors and our own particular iniquities. For all our rebellions and transgressions, O God have mercy upon us! We plead the blood of Jesus. Help every one of us to repent of sin, to fly to Christ for refuge and grant that each one of us may thus hide ourselves in the rock, till the calamity be overpass, knowing that God will not desert them that put their trust in Jesus. Thy servant is overwhelmed this day; his heart is melted like wax in the midst of him; he knoweth not how to pray. Yet Lord if Thou canst hear a groaning heart which cannot utter itself in words, thou hearest his strong impassioned cry, in which the people join. Lord save us! Lord arise and bless us; and let the might of Thine arm and the majesty of Thy strength be now revealed in the midst of this land, and throughout those countries which are in our dominion God save the Queen! A thousand blessings on her much-loved head! God preserve our country! May every movement that promotes liberty and progress be accelerated, and may everything be done in our midst, which can shield us from the discontent of the masses, and can protect the masses from the oppression of the few. Bless England, O our God. "Shine, mighty God, on Britain shine;" and make her still glorious Britain, "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth." Lord accept our confessions; hear our prayers, and answer us by Thy Holy Spirit! Help Thy servant to preach to us; and all the glory shall be unto Thee, O Father, to Thee, O Son, and Thee, O Holy Spirit; world without end. Amen and Amen.

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Let us now sing the second hymn. It is made up of verses selected from different psalms, which I thought to be appropriate to the occasion

OUR God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne,

Thy saints have dwelt secure

Sufficient is thine arm alone,

And our defense is sure.

Our foes insult us, but our hope

In thy compassion lies

This thought shall bear our spirits up,

That God will not despise.

In vain the sons of Satan boast

Of armies in array;

When God has first despised their host,

They fall an easy prey.

Our God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come

Be thou our guard while troubles last,

And our eternal home.

Hoping to receive help from God's Holy Spirit, I shall now proceed to address you from a part of the 9th verse of the 6th chapter of Micah:

SERMON.

"Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it." Micah 6:9 .

HIS world is not the place of punishment for sin; not the place; it may sometimes be a place, but not usually. It is very customary among religious people, to talk of every accident which happens to men in the indulgence of sin, as if it were a judgment. The upsetting of a boat upon a river on a Sunday is assuredly understood to be a judgment for the sin of Sabbath-breaking. In the accidental fall of a house, in which persons were engaged in any unlawful occupation, the inference is at once drawn that the house fell because they were wicked. Now, however some religionists may hope to impress the people by such childish stories as those, I, for one, forswear them all. I believe what my Master says is true, when he declared, concerning the men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, that they were not sinners above all the sinners that were upon the face of the earth. They were sinners; there is no doubt about it; but the falling of the wall was not occasioned by their sin, nor was their premature death the consequence of their excessive wickedness. Let me, however, guard this declaration, for there are many who carry this doctrine to an extreme. Because God does not usually visit each particular offense in this life upon the transgressor, men are apt to deny altogether the doctrine of judgments. But here they are mistaken. I feel persuaded that there are such things as national judgments, national chastisements for national sins great blows from the rod of God, which every wise man must acknowledge to be, either a punishment of sin committed, or a monition to warn us to a sense of the consequences of sins, leading us by God's grace to humiliate ourselves, and repent of our sin.

O, my friends, what a rod is that which has just fallen upon our country! My poor words will fall infinitely short of the fearful tale of misery and woe which must be told before you can know how smartly God hath smitten, and how sternly he hath chidden us. We have to-day to mourn over revolted subjects, for to-day a part of our fellow-countrymen are in open arms against our government. That, of itself, were a heavy blow. Happily the government of this land is so constituted that we know little of revolutions except by name; but the horrors of anarchy, the terrors of a government shaken to its foundations, are so great, that should I preach alone upon that subject, you might hear the rod, and cry aloud beneath its strokes. But this is as but the letting forth of water. A flood succeedeth. The men that have revolted were our subjects, and I challenge all the world to deny what I am going to say: they were our subjects rightly. Whatever the inhabitants of India might be (and undoubtedly that people have grave faults to find with us), the Sepoys had voluntarily given themselves up to our dominion, they had themselves taken oaths of fealty to Her Majesty and their officers, and they have no cause to murmur if they are made to endure the sentence uttered by a government of which they were the sworn and willing supporters. They were always petted, always dandled upon the knee of favoritism. Their revolt is not the revolt of a nation. If India had revolted, history might perhaps have taught us that she had patriots in her midst, who were delivering her from a tyrannical nation; but in the present cave it is only men who are impelled by a lust and ambition for empire, who have risen against us. And, ah I my friends, what crimes have they committed! Not to-day shall I detail their acts of debauchery, bloodshed, and worse than bestiality this tongue will not venture to utter what they have dared to do. Ye would rise from your seats and hiss me from the pulpit which I now occupy, if I should but dare to hint at the crimes which have been done of them, not in secret, but in the very streets of their cities.

And, again, equally as painful, we have now rebels to be executed. I look upon every gallows as a fearful chastisement. I regard every gibbet as being a dreadful visitation upon our land; and I think that whenever the arm of the ruler is outstretched for the punishment of death, it must always be looked upon by the country as a serious affliction to it. Just as the father thinks it a high affliction to chastise his child, so should a country ever esteem it to be a visitation when they have to punish, especially with the punishment of death. Now, these men must be punished; both heaven and earth demand it. I am no soldier, I love not war; I do not believe that this is a war at all, in the proper sense of the term. We are not fighting with enemies; our troops are going forth against revolted subjects against men who, by their crimes, by their murder, and by other unmentionable sins, have incurred the punishment of death; and as the arrest of a murderer by authority of the law is not war, so the arrest of Indian Sepoys, and their utter destruction is not war it is what earth demands, and what I believe God sanctions. But it is a horrible necessity. It is a dreadful thing to think of taking away the lives of our fellow-subjects; we must look upon it as being an affliction: and, to-day, amongst the other evils that we bemoan, we must bemoan this that the sword must be taken out of its sheath, to cut off our fellow-subjects by their thousands. The rod, the rod, THE ROD hath indeed fallen heavily; no mortal tongue can tell the anguish it hath caused, nor perhaps can we yet dream where its ill effects shall end.

Remember, however, the words of my text. It is a rod; but it is an appointed rod. Every deed that has been done against us has been appointed by God. God is most fully to be cleared from the sin of it, but it is undoubtedly true that he has overruled and permitted it. The rod was ordained of God. I myself see God everywhere. I believe that "the foreknown station of a rush by the river is as fixed as the station of a king, and the chaff from the hand of the winnower as steered as the stars in their courses." And I see God in this war. The wheels of providence may revolve in a mysterious manner, but I am certain that wisdom is the axle upon which they revolve, so that at last it shall be seen that God, who ordained the rod, only permitted it that greater good might follow, and that his name might be exalted through the earth. The sin is man's own deed, but the affliction that we suffer through it, God hath ordained. Let us bow before it, and let us now hearken to the exhortation of the text "Hear ye the rod, and him that hath appointed it."

I shall have your attention whilst as briefly as I can I endeavor to bid you hear this rod of God.

First, let me remark, it would have been as well if we had heard this rod BEFORE IT FELL upon us. God's rod by the wise man may be heard before it smiteth. He that understandeth God's moral government, knows that sin carries punishment in its bowels. A wise man believing revelation, could have prophesied that God would visit us. The sins of the government of India have been black and deep. He who has heard the shrieks of tormented natives, who has heard the well-provoked cursing of dethroned princes, might have prophesied that it would not be long before God would unsheath his sword to avenge the oppressed. With regard to India itself, I am no apologist for our dominion there; with regard to the Sepoys, they are our voluntary subjects, they deserve the utmost rigour of the law. From their own oath they were our subjects; and if they have revolted let them suffer the punishment of their treason. But had it been the Indian nation that had revolted, I would have prayed God that they might have been brought under British rule again, for the sake of civilization, but I would not have preached a crusade against them, lest haply we should have been smiting patriots who were but delivering an oppressed country. My brethren, I say it would have been as well if the rod had been heard before it fell. If in the midst of sin the Indian government had paused, and endeavored to undo the evil, it would have been well for them if instead of following the policy of creed they had followed the policy of right, they might have looked for divine support. They never ought to have tolerated the religion of the Hindoos at all. I believe myself (for it in no way infringes the law of right) entitled to my religion; but if my religion consisted in bestiality, infanticide, and murder, I should have no right to my religion, unless I were prepared to be hanged for it. Now, the religion of the Hindoos is neither more nor less than a mass of the rankest filth that ever imagination could have conceived. The gods they worship are not entitled to the least atom of respect. Had they given a decent character to their demons, we might have tolerated their idolatry; but when their worship necessitates everything that is evil, not religion, but morality must put it down. I do not believe that in this land there ever ought to have been any toleration for the Agapemone, a place of lust and abomination, where sin is committed before which God's sun might blush, never ought to be tolerated. Any religion that does not infringe upon morality is beyond the force of legislature. But when once religious teachers teach immorality, and when once a religion compels men to sin, down with it; no toleration to it. It is impossible that there should be any quarter strewn to vice, even though embellished with the name of religion. If it be any man's religion to blow my brains out, I shall not tolerate it. If it be any man's religion to meet me as the Thugs do, and garotte me, and murder me, I shall not tolerate his Thugism. If it be a man's religion to commit bestial acts in public, I for one would touch his conscience, but believing that he has none, I would touch him somewhere else. Such a religion as the religion of the Hindoo, the Indian Government were bound, as in the sight of God, to put down with all the strength of their hand. But they have allowed it, in some cases they have even aided and abetted their filthy deeds; and now God visits them; and, I repeat, it would have been well if they had heard the rod before it fell; they might have perhaps avoided all this evil, and certainly they would have avoided the remorse which some of them must feel in having thus brought it upon themselves.

But it has fallen. The rod has smitten; the scourge has ploughed deep furrows upon India's back. What then? "Hear ye the rod" that has fallen. Now, it is an opinion published by authority and who am I, that I should dispute the great authorities of England? that one part of the reason for this dreadful visitation, is the sin of the people of England themselves. We are exhorted this day to humble ourselves for sin. Granting me that as being a truth and mark, I am not the originator of it; it is in the Proclamation who am I, that I should dispute such a high authority as that? it is our sin that has brought it us, so they say what, then, are our sins? Now, I will be honest with you as honest as I can, and I will try and tell you. What are the most glaring sins for which, if it be true that God is now punishing us, are the most likely to have brought this visitation upon us?

First, there are sins in the community that never ought to have been allowed. O Britain, weep for deeds which thy governors have not yet strength of mind to stop. We have long been allowing the infamous nuisances of Holywell-street; bless God they are pretty well done for! But now what do I see every night? If I return from preaching in the country, in the Haymarket and in Regent-street, what stares me before my eyes? If there be a crime for which God will visit England, it is the sin of allowing infamy to walk before our eyes thus publicly. I do not know whose fault it is some say it is the fault of the police: it is somebody's fault, that I do know, and against that somebody I do now most solemnly protest. It is a most fearful thing that those who are honest and moral cannot walk the streets, without being insulted by sin in the robes of the harlot. My voice perhaps this day may reach some who have power to repeat this protest powerfully and successfully. I see before me gentlemen who are the representatives of the press. I believe they will do their duty in that matter; and if they will sting as some of them can sting, right sharply, they perhaps may be able to sting a little virtue into some of our governors, and that will be a good thing. But I do protest that this has been one of the causes why God has visited us, if indeed our sins have brought this evil upon us, as I verily believe. Look ye too, men and brethren, at some of those amusements of yours, in which ye are wont to indulge. God forbid I should deny you those of your amusements which are innocent, but I must maintain that they should be always moral; when we know that lords and ladies of the land, have sat in playhouses, and listened to plays that were a long way from decent, it is time that some voice should be lifted up against them. These are glaring sins. I am not raking now for private faults; we have had these things before our eyes, and there have been some that have dared to protest against them long ago. I say, these sins of the community in part have brought the rod upon us.

But, my friends, I am inclined to think that our class sins are the most grievous. Behold this day the sins of the rich. How are the poor oppressed! How are the needy down-trodden! In many a place the average wage of men is far below their value to their masters. In this age there is many a great man who looks upon his fellows as only stepping-stones to wealth. He builds a factory as he would make a cauldron. He is about to make a brew for his own wealth. "Pitch him in." He is only a poor clerk, he can live on a hundred a year. Put him in! There is a poor time-keeper: he has a large family; it does not matter; a man can be had for less: in with him! Here are the tens, the hundreds, and the thousands that must do the work. Put them in; heap the fire; boil the cauldron; stir them up; never mind their cries. The hire of the laborers kept back may go up to heaven: it does not matter, the millions of gold are safe. The law of demand and supply is with us, who is he that would interfere? Who shall dare to prevent the grinding of the faces of the poor? Cotton-lords and great masters ought to have power to do what they like with the people: ought they not? "Ah! but ye great men of the earth, there is a God, and that God has said he executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. And yet the sempstress in her garret, and yet the tailor in his den, and yet the artizan in his crowded factory, and yet the servants who earn your wealth, who have to groan under your oppression, shall get the ear of God, and he will visit you. "Hear ye the rod." It is for this the rod falleth on you.

Mark, again, the sins of merchants. Was there ever an age when the merchants of England had more fallen from their integrity? The mass of them, I believe, are honest to the core; but I do not know who among them are so. We can trust none in these times. Ye heap up your companies, and ye delude your myriads; ye gather the money of fools; ye scatter it to the winds of heaven, and when the poor call upon you ye tell them it is gone: but where? O! England, thou wast once true, upright, honest; men could not rightly call thee, then, "Perfidious Albion;" but now, O Britain, alas! for thee! Unless thou dost recover thyself, who can trust thee? God will visit the nation for this, and it shall be seen that this alone is one of the things which God would have us hear, when we hear the rod.

There are many of you that are poor. I saw you smile when I spoke to the rich. I will have at you also. If we are to humble ourselves this day as a nation, ye have cause also to humble. Ah, my God, what multitudes there are of men who deserve but little of their employers, for they are eye-servers, men-pleasers, and do not with singleness of heart serve the Lord. Were men better workmen, their masters would be better. There are hundreds of you that are here to-day who are the best hands in all the world to prop up walls, when you ought to be busy at your own work who, when your time is bought and paid for, steal it for something else. And how many there are in what are called the lower ranks and God forgive the man that invented that word, for we are none of us lower than the other before the Judge of all the earth how many are there that do not know what it is to look up to God, and say, "Though he has made me a servant, I will discharge my duty, and I will serve my master and serve my God with all my might." Many are the sins of the poor. Humble yourselves with the rich; bow your heads and weep for your iniquities; for these things God doth visit us, and ye should hear the rod.

It is impossible for me to-day to enter into all the sins of illiberality, of deceit, of bigotry, of lasciviousness, of carnality, of pride, of covetousness, and of laziness which infest this land. I have tried to indicate some of the chief, and I pray God humble us all for them.

And now, "Hear ye the rod." O church of God, the rod has fallen, and the church ought to hear it. I am afraid that it is the church that has been the greatest sinner. Do I mean by "the church" that established by law? No, I mean the Christian church as a body. We, I believe, have been remiss in our duty; for many and many a year pulpits never condescended to men of low estate. Our ministers were great and haughty; they understood the polish of rhetoric, they had all the grandeur of logic; to the people they were blind guides and dumb dogs, for the people knew not what they said, neither did they regard them. The churches themselves slumbered; they wrapped themselves in a shroud of orthodoxy, and they slept right on; and, whilst Satan was devouring the world, and taking his prey, the church sat still, and said, "Who is my neighbor?" and did not arouse herself to serve her God. I do hope that we have already seen the beginning of a revival. The last year has seen more preaching than any year since the days of the apostles. We are stirring in ragged schools, and in various efforts for doing good; but still the church is only half awake; I fear she still slumbers. O church of God! awake I awake I awake! for verily the rod has fallen for thy sake. "Hear thou the rod, and him that hath appointed it."

We have had many rods, friends; we have had many great afflictions, and we did bear them for a time; and now I close my sermon by saying, "Hear ye the rod, when the rod SHALL AGAIN BE STILL." We trust that in a little while our soldiers will carve us out peace and victory with their triumphant swords; we trust that, perhaps this very day a great fight is being fought, and a great victory being won. I seem to hear to-day the shout of the triumphant warrior; I think I hear the trump of victory even now. The hour of prayer is often the hour of deliverance. At any rate, we hope that ere long this black cloud will be overblown, and then I fear you will all forget it. You will pray to-day: will you pray when victory comes? You will buy some fireworks, will you not? That is how you will thank God! You had a victory over a potent enemy, and peace was established: your votive offerings consisted of rockets and illuminations grand offerings to the Dread Supreme! If a heathen were here he would say, "Their God is the God of humiliation, not the God of victory: their God is a God of trouble, certainly not the God of blessings, for they forget him when they receive deliverance." I remember, when last time the cholera swept through your streets, ye hurried to your churches, and ye prayed; terror sat upon your countenances, and many of you cried aloud for deliverance. It came. What did you do? Alas! for your piety! It was as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it passed away. It will be so again. It is but as the lashing of the water; it is smitten, but it soon recovers itself, and all marks are effaced. It is so with this land; I fear it is so with each of us to a degree. How often have you and I been laid upon our beds with cholera, or with fever, or with some other disease which threatened to take us away! We prayed; we sent for the minister; we devoted ourselves to God; we vowed, if he would spare us, we would live better. Here thou art, my hearer, just what thou wast before thy sickness. Thou hast forgotten thy vow; but God hath not forgotten it. Thy resolutions were filed in heaven, and in the day of judgment God shall take them forth, and say, "Here is one solemn covenant broken; here is another vow forgotten, another resolution made in sickness broken after recovery!" I do think that to-day will be a most solemn mockery if our humiliation ends to-day. With some of you it will not even begin to-day, and, therefore, it will not end, for it is not begun. But the mass who will pray to-day, will they pray in a week? Not they; they will go their way, to heap again the faggots of their sins upon the pile of vengeance, and still stand by and weep, because the fire is burning, the fire which they themselves have kindled. Oh! my hearers, permit me to charge home to your hearts; and would God that he would make the charge of my language against your consciences as heavy as the charge of British soldiery against the enemy! How many of you have been awakened, convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement! How many times have you vowed you would repent! How many times have you declared that you did hear the rod, and that you would turn to God! And yet you have been liars to the Almighty; you have defrauded the Most High; and whilst the bill is due it still stands dishonored. Tremble! God may smite you yet; and if to-day you are despisers of Christ, remember, you have no guarantee that you will be in this world another hour. You may before this sun is set stand before your Maker's bar. What then? what then? what then? To perish for ever is no light matter; to be cast into the flames of hell is no little consideration. "Turn ye, turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die, O house of Israel!" Repent! "The times of your ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." And remember that when he gives repentance and faith he has appended the blessing to them. "Jesus Christ of the seed of David" was nailed to a cross; he died that we might not die, and to every believer heaven's gate is open, to every penitent the path to paradise is free. Sinner I dost thou believe? If so, Christ hath blotted out thy sin. Be happy! Soul! dost thou repent? Thou art safe. God has helped thee to repent, and inasmach as he hath done that, he hath proved that he loves thee.

Oh! if I might but have some souls won to Christ to-day, what would I give? What is all this great gathering to me? It is an extra labor, that is all. For this I do not labor. God is my witness, I sought you not; never once have I said a thing to court a smile from any man. When God first sent me to the ministry he bade me fear no man, and I have not yet met the man to whom I have feared to tell of God's truth. Nor you have I sought to please, nor you have I sought to gather here. I would preach the gospel; may God give me some souls as my reward! And if but one poor sinner shall look to Jesus, clap your wings, ye angels! enough is done, for God is honored.

I have done my sermon, but I want to make an appeal to you to give liberally.

Lives there a man in England who will this day refuse his help to those of his countrymen who have suffered? No; there does not live such a man not such a Briton. Is there a miserable miscreant without a heart, who will, when God has given him enough, shut up his bowels of compassion against those whose sons and daughters have been murdered, and who themselves have escaped as by the skin of their teeth? No, I will not slander you by such a supposition. I cannot think that I have such a monster here. When the box shall pass round, give give as you can afford; if it be a penny, let the working man give. You that are rich must not give pence, however. Many a man has said, "There is my mite." He was worth a hundred thousand pounds, and it was not a mite at all; if he had given a thousand it would only have been a mite to him. Give as ye can afford it; may God be pleased to grant a liberal spirit.

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The following Chorus was then sung

GLORY, honor, praise, and power,

Be unto the Lamb for ever;

Jesus Christ is our Redeemer,

Hallelujah, Amen.

After which, the benediction having been pronounced, the service terminated.

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There were upwards of 24,000 persons present at this service; and the amount collected towards the Indian Relief Fund amounted to nearly £500, of which £25 was given by Miss Nightingale. The Crystal Palace Company contributed £200 in addition making a total of nearly £700.

"To God be all the glory."

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

Lectures on the Minor Prophets.

W. Kelly.

The prophecy of Micah, like all the rest, has its own distinctive properties, though falling into the general current of testimony to Israel, and so far with the others different from the prophecy of Jonah, which was last before us. On the surface we can see a strong resemblance between Micah's line of things and that of the prophet Isaiah. On the other hand, there is the obvious difference that, while Isaiah is large and comprehensive, Micah presents his testimony in a brief and therefore compressed if not more distinct form. The various points of truth which he was commissioned to declare are here together in a short compass.

The prophecy is divided into two if not three clearly marked sections. The first two chapters comprise the introduction: Micah 3:1-12; Micah 3:1-12; Micah 4:1-13; Micah 5:1-15 give us the climax of the prophet's testimony; and then Micah 6:1-16; Micah 7:1-20 are the appropriate conclusion.

In the first portion the prophet summons all people, and the earth itself, and all that exists, to hear Jehovah's testimony, alas! against Samaria and Jerusalem. Adonai from His holy temple, He is "coming forth," as He says, "out of his place." A striking expression it is. The dealings of grace are properly connected with where He is; God is in His place when He is showing His own sovereign mercy. For judgment He comes out of His place. In His own nature God is not a judge, but One who gives and blesses. Judgment is "His strange work," as it is said elsewhere a work therefore that, if it must be done, He will do shortly. He must make a short work, as says Isaiah. He does not like to dwell on judgment. It is a painful necessity which the wickedness of man compels, and that too because if He declined the judgment of iniquity He must abandon His own moral character. But grace is His normal work, the activities of divine love in spite of evil, not winking at it, but raising out of and above it. Grace suits God and is His delight, as it is the energy of His nature in the face of ruin. Judgment is the provisional guard of His nature, being imperatively that which is rendered necessary by the iniquity of the creature whether of the fallen angels or of rebellious man. So here the prophet declares that Jehovah comes forth out of His place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. "Jehovah cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth. And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place" (verses 3, 4).

It is in vain therefore for Israel to build themselves up in the conceit of impunity. This cannot be where Jehovah is the judge. "For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel." Sin is always evil, but never so humiliating as in the people of God. "What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?" Samaria was the chief seat of Israel, as Jerusalem was of Judah, where the house of David reigned; yet they were both high places of iniquity against Jehovah, Samaria completely and Jerusalem growingly. "Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof. And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot. Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. For her wound is incurable; for it is come unto Judah; he is come unto the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem" (verses 6-9).

Some rationalist commentators for objects of their own are disposed to regard Micah as a very late prophet; but there need be no scruple in rejecting their theories. The prophet himself says it was "in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah." There is not a tittle of evidence against the genuineness of these words, which assert that he was an early prophet. But rationalists have always at hand a summary reason for any conclusion to which their will impels them: another writer, or even so many more as each difficulty can be conceived to call for! For who at bottom is so credulous as the rationalist? It could easily be shown that the wonders which their system obliges them to receive are in their way less reasonable and worthy than the testimony to which faith bows implicitly: but then they are wonders of imposture and bad faith. Men can believe anything that lowers the credit of a prophecy, pretending withal that they honour the writer and in no way question his good faith or holiness. What a singular notion theirs must be of truth and holiness! If a writer assuming to be a man of God pretended to prophesy at a time when he was not born, and gave out as prophecy that which was only written after the fact, is he not a cheat and his writing an imposture?

If their proofs be demanded, it will be found that, under an elaborate heap of details in style and phraseology, the real difficulty is the assumption common to them all, that there is no such thing as prophecy. If the prophet therefore gives himself out as having lived before the events, they imagine that this is only a figure of speech meant to give more poetic effect for the vulgar mind, but in point of fact the writer coolly wrote about facts which had already taken place as if still future. Thus we may see infidelity always has this plague-spot underneath it, that, with the loudest profession of searching after truth, it really denies all the moral grandeur and beauty of God's revelation, destroying too dignity or even decency in man. In its anxiety to leave God out of His own word, it robs the faithful of the great witness to His knowledge of the future and of the grace which communicates that knowledge to them here below. By this degrading pseudo-criticism what is truly divine is ruthlessly explained away and reduced to the level of hypocritical imposture. It may be denied; but such is my judgment of the results of that modern infidelity which gives itself the fine name of the "higher criticism:" a poor but not unsuited conclusion for self-vaunting human learning to arrive at. It is possible that its leaders, still more readily its followers, may not be conscious that in the main it is only a modern furbishing up of the weapons of older Deism. But this it really is, with a gloss suited to the taste of the day. Is it not horrifying to think that the tinge of apostacy deepens manifestly among those who profess to study the Bible? If there be the sad assurance of deceiving men and women going on in Romanism, learned and Protestant Germany not merely plunges living men into the wretched uncertainty to which Popery always reduces those who turn away from Christ to Mary and saints and angels and the church so-called, but denies the holy fire which no fable-love stole, but divine love gave and kept for men in the written word of God, to which under a multitude of sounding words neology imputes a mass of errors of all kinds.

On the other hand to the believer the subject presents no difficulty worth mentioning. He sees that it is as easy for God to speak about the future as about the past; and in fact it is a denial of prophecy to exclude the future from the vision of the seer. Again, it is one of the principal marks of God's love for His people that He acquaints them with the future. So He dealt with Abraham, telling him what concerned not merely himself but the world. This is an immense boon: not alone nor so much the information as the grace which gave it them. That God should reveal what pertains to our own proper portion is simple enough if we are His children; but it is a special sign of His interest and intimacy to let us know of others, and this He does in prophecy. The Christian, the church of God, ought to be thoroughly acquainted by this means with what is coming to pass on the earth. We ought never to be unacquainted with the signs of the times. It is of great value to have the sense of them morally; but we ought also to know the times prophetically, and, if we honour God and His word, be assured that we shall.

There is no presumption in this. It is presumption to speak about the future, unless as far as we have learnt humbly from the prophecies God has left us in His word It is no presumption to believe any part of His word, but genuine humility of faith. It is all a question of honouring God's word. Now He has spoken, and spoken of the end from the beginning. Take the very first word in Eden, where we have the truth in twofold form. Is there any thing really grander in the Old Testament? On the one hand the serpent was to bruise the heel of the woman's Seed; on the other, the woman's Seed was to bruise the serpent's head. One of these has been accomplished; the other remains to be. That which is the moral foundation of all, namely, what God had wrought when the serpent bruised the heel of the Messiah and He suffered supremely under God's hand on the cross what God wrought there for His own glory and for the blessing of man is the one ground-work of peace for our souls this day, and for any of God's saints any day. But the other part remains still future. In its full import we may perhaps say it remains for the far future from God; for it is evident that, although at the beginning of the millennium the serpent may receive a considerable bruise on his head, not until the end of the millennium will the bruising be completed. Thus we see the first prophecy of God stretches out to the very last; so far is it from being true that God does not communicate it for the practical good and joy and blessing of the simplest of his children.

Again, it is altogether and plainly false that prophecy is only to be received and studied when fulfilled. The truth is, when fulfilled it takes another shape and acquires another use; but it ceases to be prophecy and becomes history, one use of which then is to stop the mouth of an infidel. But the proper value of prophecy is to give the child of God before it comes to pass the certainty of his peculiar privilege communion with God, who sees the things that are not as though they were. If that be our place, assuredly we ought to value and use it. This therefore may suffice as a plain and distinct answer, not only to the particular facts of Micah's prophecy, but to the general principles as regards all prophecy.

In the latter part of Micah 1:1-16 we have a very animated account of the approach of the great enemy typified by the Assyrian of those days. We know that they were one of the most formidable adversaries that Israel ever had. Whether one looks at Shalmaneser or at Sennacherib, the Assyrian was the enemy that was before the eyes of Israel. Later we find Babylon; but the case then is altogether different from Assyria. We must never confound the two. The uses that God turned Assyria and Babylon to in prophecy are as precise as they are different. They have been very commonly confounded, but there is no ground for it in scripture; and not only historically were Assyria and Babylon wholly distinct, but the future enemies which each of them typifies are just as different; for as Assyria was before Babylon in developing into a great kingdom on the earth, and was the grand head of the combined nations which were allowed to overthrow the ten tribes of Israel as well as to menace Judah, so on the other hand Babylon was that particular power which arose to supremacy not merely as a kind of suzerain head of nations bound up by a compact with each other, but as a supreme head of subject kings. In short an imperial dignity belonged not to Assyria but to Babylon. For the latter power rose up after Israel had been swept away, in order to carry Judah captive when the last hope of the house of David had completely fled, and David's son was the chief instrument of the devil for binding idolatry on Judah and on Jerusalem itself. Then God allowed Babylon to come into its marked supremacy the golden head of the Gentile image according to the figure which Daniel explained in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Now this had to do pre-eminently with Judah, and so it will be found in the future. The last head of the Gentile powers typified by that image will rise up and will join in an apostacy with the man of sin: the one being the imperial head of the western powers, or revived Roman empire; the other the religious chief in Jerusalem, accepted as Messiah but really antichrist. When the Lord shall have judged these (Revelation 19:1-21), the last Assyrian will come against not the Jews only but Israel, for these will have flocked back to their land then: at any rate representatives of all the tribes will then, as I suppose, be found in the land.

It is of this Assyrian (not of the intermediate Babylonish power which comes in after the first Assyrian and before the last) that Micah speaks; not the past so much as the future Assyrian. This is of immense importance. We must bear in mind that the great image in Daniel is an intercalated system what may be called a parenthesis which runs its course after the early Assyrian empire and before the Assyrian of the latter day. This may help to explain the case. The four great empires have their place between those two points. Now this intervening system is not taken up in Micah. Isaiah presents us with Babylon and "the king" as well as the Assyrian. Being one of the most comprehensive of all the prophets, he gives us both subjects, and this in their connection or relative order; but then Isaiah shows us exactly the same issue. When the Lord will have completed His whole work in Jerusalem, by putting down the last representative of the powers that began with Babylon, the destined captor of Jerusalem and Judah, what then? He will punish the stout looks of the king of Assyria. The Assyrian, we may see, is the last earthly enemy before the kingdom, as death is the last judicial enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) which remains till its end. But the Assyrian is none the less sternly dealt with at last: such is the positive statement in Isaiah. The ultimate and greatest is he that is described here historically under the Shalmanesers and the Sennacheribs of the past. It would seem too that with this final enemy of Israel may be identified the king of the north in Daniel 11:1-45.

Though notoriously the Assyrian is often taken for the Babylonish king or imperial head, this is certainly a mistake of moment. So the king of the north is altogether distinct from "the king" or "man of sin" who will be leagued with the little horn or chief of the Babylonish empire of the last days. The truth is that the man of sin will be the false king of the Jews the one who will come in his own name and be received of the Gentiles that rejected the true Messiah. He will be in Jerusalem, the apostate power (that began with Babylon) being not in the east but in the west. Rome and Jerusalem are the two great cities of the prophetic word, Jerusalem of all the record, Rome of the intermediate prophecy in its last phase. But when these leaders have been destroyed by the power of God exercised at the appearing of the Lord Jesus, then the king of the north will come forth as the head of the combined nations of the earth outside the image-power of Daniel. This is always to be held fast Assyria as the head of the confederate nations in opposition to Israel when owned as the people of God, Babylon and the other imperial powers down to the destruction of the beast while the people are disowned by Him. After the beast and the false prophet are consigned to the lake of fire, the king of the north will come forward for a fresh attack with the highest expectations; but he will be dealt with by the Lord in person, who will then have resumed His relationship with Israel and will act in this case through Israel, though there will be evidently divine intervention in the judgment of the Assyrian on the mountains of Israel. Personally however, as the last leader of the power that began with Babylon will be cast alive into the pit, so also will it be with the Assyrian. Their followers will be dealt with in a less distinctly divine manner, though their destruction will be quite beyond an ordinary overthrow. Whatever the means employed as to the kings and their hosts, the Assyrian army will be beaten down by the medium of Israel. God will employ His people as His instruments, though there will not be wanting the fighting as it were from heaven itself against them. Hailstones and fire are described in Ezekiel lightning and thunder from God marking that, although He employs Israel, still the defeat is under the direct guidance of Jehovah.

The attack of the nations called Gog and Magog (Revelation 20:1-15) is clearly at the close of the millennium, and therefore quite distinct from what we are now describing. But in Ezekiel 38:1-23; Ezekiel 39:1-29 we hear of a final effort before the millennium properly so-called begins. I am not prepared to say that this will not be the last effort of the king of the north. It seems certainly the same policy. The king of the north is described in a remarkable manner as being mighty, but not by his own power. That is to say, he will be supported by the resources of another power, which I believe can be no other than Russia; but Russia is in the background as the one that will back up the king of the north, or the Assyrian. The king of Assyria will be then the holder of what is now the Sultan's dominions or the Ottoman Porte. This potentate to the north of the Holy Land will acquire considerable strength, and be found in a state totally different from the excessive decrepitude which we see now. It used to be a common saying with politicians that Turkey was dying for want of Turks; but this will not be the case then. I suspect that Greece and Turkey in Europe, with perhaps Asia Minor, will form a sufficiently strong kingdom where the Byzantine kingdom was once known, the Turks proper being probably driven back into their own deserts.

If this be so, those we now know as Turks will be expelled from Pera, and then the renewed Syro-Greek kingdom will really have its head-quarters in Constantinople, will there play its part once more in the great drama of the future, and be, I have no doubt, as thoroughly unprincipled a kingdom under its final shape as ever it has been under its Mohammedan form. The state of the Greeks we all know to be sorry enough now; but I speak solely from what is revealed inDaniel 8:1-27; Daniel 8:1-27 and elsewhere in scripture. If they are morally among the most degraded people in Europe, and none the less for their sharpness and knavery, their meddling with Jewish affairs will precipitate matters and produce awful results. If they have the pride and vanity of the ancient Greeks, what is it with corrupted Christians without the poor moral elements that heathens could have?

Thus the nations which played their part in Old Testament story will assume their final shape ere long, and then come into the earthly judgment of God in the end of this age when the manifested kingdom of the Lord shall bring the earth and all races of mankind into rest and blessing. The coming of the Son of man is not for the judgment of Christendom only, but for the execution of all the purposes of God whether for heaven or earth. This is no doubt of vast importance, though apt to be overlooked where man thinks that there is nothing before us but the divine decision as regards individuals for eternity. What fertile soil for error is the mind where Christ's glory is forgotten and the word of God has not its just authority! The judgment of Christendom then will precede that of the nations, when Israel must come to the front in the ways of God for the world. I speak of the judgment of the quick, not of the dead. Doubtless Christendom has come in as a specially favoured quarter. It has enjoyed the testimony of the truth of God in remarkable ways, though I quite admit that many parts of the earth once enjoyed that testimony which have long become apostate in Mohammedanism, yet more manifestly than the west which has fallen away into Popery; but all nations as such will be judged of God when the day of Jehovah arrives. Those that are real as belonging to Christ will have been taken up to heaven, and thus will not be in the scene of judgment when it comes.

Among the Jews will be those who are to be conspicuous as witnesses on earth in the latter day after the translation of the risen Old Testament saints and the church to meet the Lord above. For the Spirit will begin to work afresh in that nation, and a remnant will be converted in order to be the earthly people of Jehovah, when with His glorified saints Christ comes to reign. A certain number will have been prepared during the awful horrors of the apostacy and the man of sin, some dying for the truth, and others preserved through those days of Satan's power and rage. For the moment earth is to be blessed as a whole, Israel, now compelled to take the ground of mere mercy, will have every promise fulfilled: they, not we Christians, are the chosen people: of God for the earth. Their hopes are bound up with the predicted glory of God on the earth. Our hope is altogether different. We look to be with Christ in the Father's house on high; in fact the church of God begins with Christ the Lord ascending to heaven, and sending the Holy Ghost from heaven to unite us with Christ in heaven. There was no such thing as Christianity, in the proper sense of the word, till Christ took His place in heaven as the glorified man after accomplishing redemption. I am not denying the faith of the Old Testament saints, nor the quickening of their souls, nor their expectation of a portion above; but the Christian who knows not of other privileges now beyond these has much to learn.

Thus Christianity is characteristically heavenly. He who is essentially its life and exemplar is Christ, as we know Him, risen and enthroned at the right hand of God; and the Holy Ghost is come down, since Christ was glorified, to be the power and guide of the Christian and the church here below. It was the business of the Christian individually and corporately to maintain this for their testimony both as truth and in practice. Not only have they not maintained it, but they have allowed themselves to become Judaized. What the apostle Paul fought against so energetically during his ministry has taken place, and there has been a most painful compound of heavenly truth with earthly rule, practice, and hope. The consequence is that conglomerate which we commonly now call "Christendom," consisting of Greek church and Roman, Oriental and Protestant bodies of every description, national or dissenting. Where is the witness to the one body animated by the one Spirit? These various and opposed communities may have different measures of light, but in none exhibit an approach to an adequate testimony, either of the Spirit's presence and power, or of the word of God, in subjection to the Lord Jesus. They really testify to the actual state of ruin which pervades the house of God, though doubtless to His infinite patience and grace.

Every serious believer (no matter who he may be, and I have had real communion with many of the children of God, I am happy to say, spite of much which is opposed to my convictions) must own that not a single fragment answers to the Lord's will, still less does the whole. I know some who feel and would confess it, not merely in low-church ranks but among high-churchmen who truly love the Lord. And here let it be said that, much as I deplore their idolatry of forms (forms utterly erroneous too, and an inroad of Judaism if not Paganism), I cannot but avow my preference of a godly high-churchman who enjoys communion with God to a man of less godliness who boasts of liberal feeling and what is called low-churchism and evangelical doctrine. It is the merest illusion and spirit of party to make notions or names supersede what is evidently of God. It is of the greatest consequence at the present time to the children of God to settle and build themselves up in divine truth. Is there anything else worth living for? Is there anything in the present state of Christendom that has a just claim on the spiritual affections of God's children? I speak not of sentiment or of old attachment, but as bound up with Christ. What we want therefore is that we should hold simply to the Lord, and seek to manifest by His grace that our treasure is not on the earth but in the heavens that we value nought compared with Christ Himself, and that on the earth which is the nearest and best reflection of Him. The only sure way of accomplishing it is by seeing well to it that the eye is fixed on Christ, and so surrendering ourselves to the word and Spirit of God. Be assured that nothing else is worth caring for. How soon the early saints began to seek their own things, not those of Jesus Christ! By degrees the consequence was that utter declension set in, which, when it ripens into apostacy and the man of sin, the Lord will judge at His appearing.

But in that judgment will be the distinction which we have seen. The west, which will be the main scene of the Christian apostacy, with Jerusalem the connected centre of the Jewish lawless one (as we may observe, both the Christian and the Jewish apostate climax), will then be judged; and in that judgment will be the destruction of the beast, the head of the apostate Gentile power, and the man of sin, the head of apostate religious pretension. When this is done, there will follow the great national confederacy headed by the Assyrian and Gog. The latter seems to be the protecting power which stimulates the king of the north, and uses him as an instrument at first and then at length comes up to fall for ever under the hand of Jehovah.

This I believe to be a true sketch of the predicted future. After the destruction of these enemies will come the peaceful reign of the Lord Jesus. Thus it is plain there will be combined in the future two qualities: the Messiah will answer to David, the victorious king, before He shows Himself the anti-type of Solomon, the peaceful king. He will put down the foes, and then reign in peace when there is no one longer to defile, oppose, or destroy.

It follows of course that the extent of the judgment of Christendom will be a much wider area than the simple overthrow of the congregated nations who oppose the Lord near Jerusalem. For instance, the judgment of Babylon will involve in it the humiliation and punishment of all the different parts of professing Christendom, then of course apostate under the seventh vial just before Christ appears. The downfall of Babylon is just before He comes for the judgment of the world. There will remain the lawless beast and false prophet, with all that follow them to be destroyed when He appears in glory. The last providential judgment will be soon followed by the shining forth of Christ's coming. Thus not merely corrupt Christendom will be smitten in the form of Babylon, with Rome its active centre, as it will continue to be to the end; but the final rebellion that the Lord will judge when He comes will arrange itself under the beast and the false prophet, which is not the state of Babylonish corruption, but a condition of open wilful rejection of God and His Christ. This last will comprise the head of the revived Roman empire of that day, who will sustain the antichrist against the king of the north; and the scene of the destruction will be Jerusalem or its neighbourhood.

Thus the judgment of Christendom will be in a certain sense providential judgments before the brightness or appearing of the Lord's coming, when He destroys them by the breath of His mouth. Who can suppose, for example, that America, or Australia, or India, will be unscathed in the judgments of the latter day? The truth is that no place or nation bearing the name of Christ, or having had the gospel preached there, will escape.

It is true that some of these lands, as America, are not expressly named in prophecy. But this in no way hinders the application of general principles. The judgment of the habitable world will take all in. Nor is God mocked by an ocean. His hand will surely deal with those who despise Him, east or west. It is not always understood that, when Babylon is judged, she sits not only on the seven hills but upon many waters. These waters, I suppose, mean all the streams of professedly Christian doctrine that spring from Babylonish principles. They constitute the main corruption of Christianity. The apostacy follows, but is a much more open avowed hostility than any such corruption of Christianity, though apparently its reactionary result. It would seem to be more centralised than Babylon's influence, and to have a more circumscribed place. Then, after the beast's judgment as well as Babylon's, the confederacy of nations will cover again a larger sphere, because this is not necessarily professing Christendom at all. They may be heathen nations or not. I presume that the nations of central Asia will all succumb to Russia, and will perish most signally on the mountains of Israel. It is well known that, even to the Chinese and others, the eastern races are sinking under the control of Russia, not without resistance and checks, but sure in the end to fall under its steady never-abandoned policy. It is not more certain for the Porte than for Persia, or for central India; not all to be absorbed into the empire, but all to accept its leadership. Astonishing is the blindness of men to what is coming. Such will be the part played by the Assyrian, who appears to be the great north-eastern instrument of Russia's designs; but they will all come under the judgment of God. The fact is that in due time all the nations must be judged as such: only there will be different measures of judgment according to differences of privilege. The greater our favour from God, the more strict the account to be rendered. Every one can feel the righteousness of this, and in judgment it is a question of righteousness. But the portion of the Christian is of grace which reigns through righteousness: and hence therefore his place will be with Christ. They will be all taken away from the earth and its varied circumstances of sorrow here to meet the Lord Jesus and dwell with Him in the Father's house. This is not of course revealed in the Old Testament, but only in the New where the proper revelation of Christianity is given.

In Micah 2:1-13 we have the conclusion of the first strain of the prophecy. "Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage." Surely all this would be strange as addressed to the Christian. We never find such a style of warning in the New Testament. The reason is plain. The law was the rule of the Jew. Now the law claims in natural righteousness, and deals with the want of it. What therefore they failed in was the practical answer to natural righteousness. But the Christian, even supposing he were ever so righteous in natural duties, is far from rising up to the standard which becomes a Christian. We have to walk according to Christ in spiritual things as well as in natural. Consequently wee need the light as it shone in Him, and the truth of the New Testament as the rule and guide of our walk, not merely the moral law that deals with man in the flesh.

Manifestly then our position is not in the flesh before God, as we are carefully told in Romans 8:1-39, where walking in the Spirit is insisted on. Of course nobody denies that the flesh is in us; but as Christians we are not in it. Such is the doctrine of the apostle Paul; and only unbelief would think of explaining away or even essaying to correct his language. It is not for believers so richly blessed either to dispute his accuracy or to forsake their own mercies. The apostle Paul says positively of all Christians, "Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that God's Spirit dwell in you." Such then is the distinctive standing of every Christian man. What is the meaning of it? Clearly this, that it belongs to me characteristically as a Christian that I am in Christ; that, instead of being defined as part of the race by fallen Adam, I have in Christ a new life and a new place. In short there is a new standing before God in Christ. This is as true now as it ever can be: the better resurrection will not confer but display its blessedness. When we go to heaven, we shall not be simply in Christ, we shall be with Christ; but we are in Christ while we are on earth.

It is needful to heed the distinctions made and given in scripture. Fear not to believe the word. Cavillers may and do say that these are fine-drawn distinctions. If God has so revealed His truth to us (and scripture alone decides that He has), they may be exquisitely fine, but they are according to Him in whose wisdom and goodness we confide. We are bound to distinguish where and as God does; and if we fail to follow, we shall find out too late our loss. The truth is that there is a great deal of latent unbelief in those who cavil at the distinctions of the word of God. For all progress in real knowledge is tested by, as growth in true wisdom largely consists in, distinguishing things that differ. When a man is learning a new language, the sounds seem much alike to his ear; the characters too wear a sort of sameness of appearance which he fails at first properly to discriminate. Thus he who begins to hear the Hebrew language, or who looks at the written words, is struck with their monotony, and sees a set of strange square letters, many of them so similar as to create for his eyes no small embarrassment.

Such is more or less exactly the case with a person reading the Bible at first, and seeking to grow in the truth. The ignorant are apt to fancy that it is all merely the way to be forgiven of God and our duty. Everything is tortured to this, because it is the thought of their own minds. But when justified by faith, we have peace with God. Then we begin to distinguish the truths of scripture, and we learn that some passages treat chiefly of the divine nature, others of redemption; some of priesthood, others of justification; some of the riches of grace, others of the horrors of antichrist; some of salvation, others of the walk, and others again of the hope. The Jews, the Gentiles, the church, all have their place. Then the distinctions begin to crowd upon us, when wants are met, conscience is exercised but cleansed, and the heart set upon Christ. Yet it is plainly not in the nature of things to be spiritually fit for understanding the scriptures with fulness before we have found rest in Christ; but when this is known by the new man, do not yield to the selfishness which would stop there, but let us use the peace and rest of faith to increase by the knowledge of God to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

Thus we shall soon learn the broad distinction, that to the Jew the evil denounced is of a much more external nature oppression, covetousness, idolatry. These are the great iniquities with which they were charged. These are not our characteristic perils, though of course we may fall into any of them. But in the New Testament we find another class of evil; namely, bad and false doctrine, which destroys communion and undermines and corrupts the walk. Such uncleanness of spirit does not seem spoken of in the Old Testament. Why? Because we stand in a new and peculiar place. We have doubtless all the benefit of the ancient oracles, but we have the special instruction, help, and joy of the New Testament, which those of old had not; and our calling, being a peculiar thing, requires therefore peculiar scriptures to give us the light that is wanted for the glory of God. I make this remark by the way. Hence the upshot of what I am saying is this, that there are certain moral immutable principles, and that they always abide. Consequently what is true from the first of Genesis remains true to the end of Revelation; but then we have our own peculiar words and exhortations given us. We must distinguish between old things and new. The general truths of God which direct the Jew or the Gentile are surely for the Christian, besides that calling of God in Christ Jesus which we now know in His name and by the Spirit of our God.

As Israel has the prominent place in Amos, so the converse is seen in Micah, who does not omit the kingdom of Samaria, but has Judah and Jerusalem as the prime objects of his expostulation. They pre-eminently are warned of those natural offences against the moral ways of God, which the false prophets bore with and even cherished. But they learn that their prophets shall be taken away from them. The prophets had flattered the people, prophesying smooth things and deceits. Of course they were not really servants of God, but from the mere school of prophets. When prophesying became traditional, it soon became corrupt. Those that God raised up extraordinarily dispensed the true light of God on the earth, and "Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of Jehovah. Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy: they shall not prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame." What they had misused they should lose.

Then comes a most animated appeal in the latter part of this chapter. "O thou that art named the house of Jacob, is the Spirit of Jehovah straitened? are these his doings? do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?" So we have a solemn call to them. "Arise and depart, for this is not your rest; it is polluted." Here is a grave and precious principle. The people of God are never to rest in that which does not suit Him. Jehovah decides that the only rest which He can sanction for them is the rest that is worthy of Himself. Hence from the beginning we see, graven even on the time which fleets away, that God, when He sanctified the seventh day as the sabbath of rest, gave a sure pledge that remains for His people to the end of the world. The sabbath consequently has a most important place in the order of God for man on the earth, as we learn from His word. But the Jew was always prone to be premature in looking for his rest. The same fault repeats itself in Christendom. But it is not so. Whatever we may have before God in Christ, we are still in scenes of war and labour. Our rest is not here; nor is it now. What do men flatter themselves they are going to bring about by discoveries and inventions? They hope that they may turn the moral wilderness of the world into a paradise, and thus find a present rest here. Is not this what they yearn after? Unconverted men, as the rule, are full of vaunt and vain glory: and I am afraid that too many of the converted yield to these fleshly dreams of the world. All will come to nought. The truth is that God means to effect rest; yet it will not be the fruit of man's work but of His own. It was after the six days in which He made heaven and earth that God sanctified His rest at first, and, as our Lord, "my Father worketh hitherto, and I work," He is still active, carrying forward the work of grace, the new creation; and after this is done the true and final rest of God will come, and the people of God shall share it the heavenly ones above, the earthly below. It is the earthly people who are addressed by Micah, and warned not to look for a rest before the Lord's time.

So no less but more shall Christians rest by and by. Our business is to work meanwhile. Now is the time for labour; now we must be sedulously beware of making a rest of our own. By and by we shall enjoy to the full the rest of God, when the true Captain of salvation shall lead us in, not anticipatively as now, but in actual and complete possession for the body as well as soul and spirit.

In order to bring in this rest the breaker must come up He who brings to nought every spurious rest. So in prophetic vision Micah sees. "The breaker has come up before them." "I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel." There will be none of the people left out when it is a question of introducing the rest of God. But the breaker must come before them. "They have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and Jehovah on the head of them." It will be the rest of God when He shall have dispelled all substitutes for it, and evidently set aside every hindrance and repaired all breaches, Himself joining His people and bringing them in, whether to the earthly or to the heavenly rest. For long war against God will have closed, and all the universe of God shall rest above and below. Such is the bright millennial day according to scripture.

In Micah 3:1-12 we have a still more solemn appeal directed to the heads and princes of the house of Israel. Now we know of course, that while all the people have their responsibility, the chief weight must necessarily be according to the position of individuals. Wickedness in him who holds an office of trust is worse, and justly dealt with as more serious, than the same evil would be in a subordinate person. Iniquity for instance in a judge has a graver character than dishonesty in an ostler or his master. Corruption or tyranny in a king is deeper guilt than delinquencies here or there in any of his subjects. It is granted that this may not suit the doctrinaires of the present day; but I hold to what God has laid down in scripture. People may give it up; but they will prove ere long that there is nothing like the truth of God. Now the word of God explicitly lays down these principles to which faith will adhere; and, whatever the inventions of man meanwhile, God will surely judge according to His own inflexible revelation, so that men will merely suffer the consequences of their own folly in departing from it. Consonant to this the prophet speaks in the opening of this chapter. "Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?" The sin of the people had been exposed in the first two chapters; the sin of the heads comes forward here, and among them the wickedness of the prophets. "Thus saith Jehovah concerning the prophets that make my people err." What can be more delusive and fatal? It is bad enough when a man's will makes him err; how much worse when that which ought to be the strongest check on will and the surest guard of holiness impels him head-foremost into everything that is contrary to God.

Hence these false prophets were the mere instruments of the people, and Micah predicts that night shall be unto them instead of their pretended light. "Ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them." Nothing can be more magnificent than his figures; but, what is better, they are true. "Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God." Those who misguided others shall be left to their own delusions. They preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil; and so Jehovah distinctly lets them know by Micah; for it is the prophet who speaks. "Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgressions, and to Israel his sin. Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest."

Micah 4:1-13. And what next? Glorious news! God takes all into His own hand. As is commonly felt and said, "Man's extremity is God's opportunity;" so it will manifestly be in the latter day. How blessed to have believed before that day! The last day to man has always the sound of death and judgment: to him no funeral note so tremendous. At others he may find fuel for pride: this is a death-knell to himself, with an indescribable dread of eternity. The present day is always what man finds his joy and his activity in. The last day presents ideas confused no doubt, and not without popular error, but so far justly it is to man ominous of divine judgment; and this he dreads, not without reason. The last day to the believer is a prospect of perfect unending joy, blessedness, light, and glory. It is the day when righteousness and truth will have the upper hand; the day when man will be most truly elevated, because God is exalted; for how can there be real order and due honour if God have not His supremacy? Is it not the basis of rights that God should have His? This is exactly what will be vindicated in the last day; and therefore when God has His just place on earth as in heaven, man will have his true dignity secured; for assuredly God's delight is in the blessing of the creature. This is what love always devises, and if able effects; it delights in the good of the object it loves; and such is the feeling of God in respect of His creatures. Consequently when He is glorified, man will have the fulness of His blessing.

Hence therefore we do wait in hope for these last days, not the fond and baseless vision of man's vaulting presumptuous ambition, but the day when God, having put down corruption and lawlessness, shall establish His own way in the peaceful reign of the once despised but now and for ever exalted man, the Lord Jesus, Jehovah, Messiah of Israel, and Son of man.

This is what the prophet brings in: "But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of Jehovah shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it." Instead of merely flowing down, which is the natural course of rivers, the peoples will flow up around the sanctuary of Jehovah, then indeed a house of prayer for all. The change will be supernatural everywhere. Heaven and earth will bear glad witness of the glory and the power of Jehovah, yet withal displayed in the man Christ Jesus, and in those that are His above and below. No room will be left for the idolizing of nature more than any other idol. That day will proclaim the Lord, making a clean sweep of what man prides himself in, and proving that, although man may have done his best, the time is come for God to show His incontestable superiority.

I am persuaded therefore, whatever may be the progress of the age, that not a single shred which gives room to boast of the first man will remain in the day of Jehovah. Take for instance the electric telegraph and the railways. I see no ground to believe that the Lord will condescend to have either used during the millennial reign. Do you suppose that divine power can or will not outdo any invention, let it be ever so prodigious in man's eyes? If they ask how these things can be, a believer need not be concerned to find an answer save that which revelation furnishes as to the fact itself. It is enough for him that he certainly knows God will put down self-exalting man and in that day exalt Himself. Not a single relic shall be left: God will make a tabula rasa of all the busy works of man on the earth for the last six thousand years, or at least since the flood; and He will show that, wherein man has most pride, God will do better. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life must pass away. Even the grandeur of nature as it is must fall, still more the imposing structures of man, petty in comparison: for what are their high towers and fenced, walls in presence of lofty hills and sublime mountains? Strong and stately ships shall be broken and pleasant pictures fade into nothingness. Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day. Isaiah 2:1-22; Isaiah 3:1-26 says much but by no means all of the vast changes "that day" will introduce among things small and great. In fact the Lord will set Himself then to do everything here below in a way and to an extent suitable to His own glory. To my mind, there is no ground apparent for drawing the line of exceptions. Jehovah's exaltation to the exclusion of the first Adam has the widest application all by which man has sought to set himself up, and gain glory and delight yes, everything.

There is to be the shaking of the heavens and the earth, with the immense accompaniments and consequences of an act so solemn and unique. The day of Jehovah strikingly combines two things: that God will deal with the immense bounds of creation, the heavens and the earth, at the same time that He will stoop to deal with the pettiest fripperies of men and women. We are apt to connect the judgment of God only with things on a great scale, if indeed men think at all of the judgment of the quick. To counteract an impression so opposed to scripture I draw attention to this. Nothing will escape His eye and hand.

But then there will be moral changes of moment and of the highest interest, as here we read that "Many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares." Such, according to the Bible, is the reign of peace then, and not before. All attempts of peace societies meanwhile are at best an amiable illusion, at worst an infidel confidence in man, always ignorance of God's word. They may possibly influence in isolated cases, though it may be doubted whether when kings or statesmen or countries have made up their minds to a policy which enlists general sympathy within their own spheres and with means adequate at their disposal, any such theories or sentiments will avail to hinder. It is certain that wars have their roots in the passions and lust of man: to escape the bad fruit you must first make the tree good. But the day of Jehovah will deal with man in righteousness and power, and peace will result according to His mind and glory.

Besides there will be outward plenty. A thought full of comfort it is that the day is coming when the earth with every creature of God shall yield its increase, not now the poor and stunted growth of hill and dale, but teeming harvests and rich fruits and flowers of sweetest odour and varied beauty in form or hue, which, if they show the hand of God now, as they surely do, nevertheless confess the blighting fall and curse in decay and death. Disappointment and sorrow meet one everywhere: scripture is plain as to both the cause and the effects. But it is equally plain that a Deliverer is coming for "that day," when "they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of Jehovah of hosts hath spoken it."

What is weightier still morally, there will be a cessation of idolatry, "For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of Jehovah our God for ever and ever. In that day, saith Jehovah, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted." This is the Jewish people. "And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation; and Jehovah shall reign over them in mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever." Such shall be the final restoration of Israel by divine grace and power. "And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion." Not merely the first in the sense of being highest on the earth, but first also, it would seem, as renewing what was known in the days of David and Solomon. The first dominion they possessed then, for every Jew looked back wistfully to those bright days. They will return again, and yet more, under a greater than David or Solomon.

Meanwhile they taste sorrow, for Jehovah will surely deal in discipline with His people. He will not take them up and re-establish them without moral exercises and a deep spiritual process in their souls. This is now described. Also many nations shall be gathered. Not only will there be a question of sin raised in the breast of every Israelite then to be saved, but there will be outward distress under the retributive hand of God, when the nations gather with the thought to defile and destroy Zion. But Jehovah says, "They know not the thoughts of Jehovah, neither understand they his counsel; for he shall gather them as sheaves into the floor. Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people [many nations], and I will consecrate their gain unto Jehovah, and their substance unto Jehovah of the whole earth. Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us;" that is, against the Jew. It is the Assyrian who will then come up the last king of the north. "He hath laid siege against us." There is to be a future siege of Jerusalem when the Jews return in unbelief unto their land and God is beginning to work in some of their hearts. "He hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek."

Micah 5:1-15. The Jews once despised and insulted, rejected and crucified the Lord of glory, their own Messiah; and this is what brings in the wonderful prophecy that follows: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel." This is the judge of Israel already spoken of. Thus the second verse is unequivocally a parenthetic description of who this judge of Israel is. Though there may seem to be remarkable abruptness in the way it is introduced here, it is scarcely possible to doubt that what has been already explained gives the object and accounts for the manner of the prophet, and is the key to the passage. Why is it that the Lord allows the last siege of Jerusalem? He says it is because of their conduct towards their ruler and judge. Who was the judge? He was born in Bethlehem, but not this only, for "his goings forth have been of old from everlasting." He was a divine person. He in grace became a babe in Bethlehem; but He was Jehovah the true God of Israel. Then follows the conclusion of the sentence begun in the first verse. "Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel."

It is Zion "which travaileth." This is a most important statement to understand. When Christ, the judge of Israel, came the first time, they would not have Him, but contumeliously refused Him. The consequence of His death on the cross was that God raised Him from the dead, and He went up in due season to heaven. Christ ascended to the right hand of God, and there He began a new work, namely, the calling out of a heavenly people to share His portion on high. This is what is going on now. If we have Christ at all, we have Christ for heavenly glory; that is, a Christian has: and this is what we are if we have any living portion in Christ. But then He means to have an earthly people by and by, and consequently in the midst of this final siege of Jerusalem the judge of Israel will re-appear. He has given them up for the time because of their unbelief and rejection of Himself; but He does not give up for ever. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." As sure as He chose that people of old, He will renew His links with them by and by. But they are none the less allowed to suffer the consequences of their own mad and wicked rejection of the Messiah meanwhile; and when He comes back again, it will be in the midst of their bitterest sorrows. Under such circumstances she that travails will bring forth.

The end of her pangs will come through His grace, and the morning without clouds shall succeed the long night. Oh, how deep will be the joy when He whom they had rejected of old is once more restored to them, the Judge of Israel! when, instead of taking Jews out of their Israelitish position to bring them into the church of God begun at Pentecost and going on ever since, the remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. They go back to their Jewish hopes. Such is the meaning of the third verse. The remnant of His brethren, instead of being taken out of their old associations and made Christians as now, will resume their place as children of Israel. For the earthly blessing, according to prophecy, there is nothing more important. It is impossible for a man to understand the verse, or expound it properly, who does not see the difference between the heavenly calling now and the earthly calling by and by. This is the reason why the Fathers felt such a difficulty, and went so far astray; for not one of them believed in the restoration of Israel; yet some of them had a measure of light; but they all slipped into the groundless conceit that the Gentile has displaced the Jew permanently, and the church and Israel are to be under the glorious reign of Christ on earth, I may say, jumbled strangely together. That is, it was the most incongruous mixture of heavenly and earthly things that can be imagined.

But the revealed truth is that the heavenly people will be on high, and the earthly people on the earth. All is perfect order in the mind of God as usual; and when the Lord will have finished His heavenly work He will come back as Judge of Israel. He is now Head of the church. On earth He will be the Messiah of the Jews, who will then resume their own earthly standing, instead of being absorbed into the church, as believers from among them are now. Next, we are told that "he shall stand and feed in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God; and they shall abide." Thus the Jews, instead of being swept out of their land, shall be once more settled in it; "for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth." All their strength depends on His greatness. "And this man shall be the peace." He that is our peace in heaven shall be their peace on earth. "This man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land." How plain that the Assyrian is to re-appear for the final dealings of Jehovah at the end of this age, and even at the beginning of the new age! It confirms what we saw in Isaiah. Jehovah will have renewed His connection with Israel when the Assyrian comes up to meet his doom the head of the combined nations in the great confederacy which is broken just before the millennium.

Then we have this description pursued. "And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from Jehovah, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men." They shall bring fulness of comfort for the earth; but besides that they are to be as a lion. Now the church may and ought to be like dew, but I do not think nay am sure they are never called to be like a lion. Assuredly it would be hard for the most sprightly of popular preachers to elicit any tolerable spiritual significance out of the figure so as to suit the church The truth is, if we take the word of God as He has given it, all is plain; Israel are once more in question, for they will be charged with a judicial task on earth. "And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both "readeth down, and feareth in pieces, and none can deliver. Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all thine enemies shall be cut off. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith Jehovah, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots: And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds." Graven images are to be destroyed, and vengeance taken on the heathen, such as they have not heard.

Then comes the conclusion of the prophecy. The first portion of it (Micah 6:1-16) is in part a most solemn pleading of Jehovah. "Hear ye now what Jehovah saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, Jehovah's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for Jehovah hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. O my people, what have I done unto thee?" Jehovah appeals to their own feelings of what is right. "O my people, what have I done unto thee? Wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me. For I have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." Had He ever been but the same God?

And then the answer comes. "O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of Jehovah. Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Very far from this was Israel's walk.

But nobody does so until he is brought in as a converted soul and receives the grace of God in Christ. It is impossible to act justly and to be really humble before God, until we have turned to Him in faith, though we may not yet have seen our sins covered by His grace, nor by any means clearly know that He will not impute iniquity to us. There is a real repentance wrought in the soul first; and Israel will be brought into this. It is faith which produces real repentance and true humility; where faith was not, we find to the end of the chapter the solemn proof of evil manifested in both people and king. Then the prophet takes the place of intercession. "Woe is me!" says he, "for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape-gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the first-ripe fruit. The good man is perished." It is a plaint of the prophet which passes at length into a prayer. Then he describes in the most striking manner the fearful rupture of all bonds and the treachery prevalent among the Jews. "Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide; keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house." It is a solemn thought that these are the words that Jesus applies to the effect of His message of the kingdom. What an awful proof of man's evil that the state of things which will bring God's final judgment of the Jew at the end is that which the Lord prepares the disciples to expect as the effect where this gospel is preached now. Nothing brings out the malice of the heart so much as the pressure of God's grace on men; nor does anything else expose a man to so much contempt or hatred; yet it is returning evil and nothing but evil for the greatest good that God ever gave man on the earth. Thus then the Christian ought to know all through his course on earth, as the godly Jew will know in the last day, what Micah shows us here. We anticipate everything as having Christ. We know the good in God and we know the evil in man even now. The Jew will have to learn it by and by, waiting a special time; the Christian knows it at all times, if faithful to Christ and the truth,

Then the prophet breaks out in noble words, warning the enemy not to rejoice, for Jehovah is going to espouse the cause of His people. Grant that they do not deserve it; but Jehovah is going to do it for His own mercy and word's sake. Accordingly we have "The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of Jehovah our God, and shall fear because of thee." The prophecy ends with the expression of his soul's delight in the forgiving grace of God to His ancient people. All the good He will do in the latter day is but the accomplishment of what He promised from the first: so blessed are the ways of God from beginning to end. He is the unchanging Jehovah spite of all the changes of His people.