permanent dynasty over the empire of Solomon, in the disruption of which the national hopes of Israel were finally doomed to perish!

If we are, indeed, reading history, to us Ahijah is a dangerous fanatic, Jeroboam a willing traitor, and the occasion-when tempter and tempted stood thus alone in the field-the momentous hour which was finally to determine the fortunes of the Hebrew race for all time.

If Jeroboam had been an honest man and promptly denounced, in the presence of the king, the pernicious fanaticism which menaced dynasty and empire, Solomon might yet have impeached the prophets, destroyed their political influence, and thus changed the future course of ancient and modern history.

Several generations later, when the prophet Amos publicly predicted that Jeroboam II., king of Israel, should die by the sword, 'Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel.'1 This was, obviously, the rational view of prophetic denunciation; but prophecy seems then to have been disarmed of its superstitious terrors. The king received the communication with contemptuous silence, and stultified the prophet by a prosperous reign and peaceful death. As Amos, however, was an irregular practitioner, holding no diploma from the schools of the prophets, perhaps the sacred annalists did not consider it necessary that his predictions should be accurately

fulfilled.

Solomon was also warned of the conspiracy against his empire, but too late to prevent the escape of

1 Amos vii.

Jeroboam into Egypt; whence he returned on the death of his royal benefactor, to usurp the throne of Israel, in fulfilment of the supposed will of the Deity.

The sacred annalists apparently intimate that the defection of the ten tribes was caused by the ungracious refusal of Rehoboam to lighten the national burden of taxation; but in 1 Kings xii. 15 we read: 'Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the people; for the cause was from the Lord, that he might perform his saying which the Lord spake by Ahijah the Shilonite unto Jeroboam the son of Nebat.' It mattered not, therefore, whether the son of Solomon was wise or foolish. He, as well as Jeroboam, was a mere cipher in the hands of prophetic destiny. Ahijah the Shilonite had spoken, the cause of the prediction was the idolatry of Solomon, the usurper would establish the worship of golden calves, but let Israel and even her religion perish rather than question the irrevocable decrees of the prophets !

Rehoboam would have willingly fought to preserve the union, but the word of God came unto Shemaiah the man of God, saying, Speak unto Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and unto all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the remnant of the people, saying, Thus saith the Lord; ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren, the children of Israel; return every man to his house, for this thing is from me.'1 We wonder what President Lincoln wonld have said to the prophet who told him it was from the Lord that he should let the Confederates go!

1 1 Kings xii. 22-24.

CHAPTER XI.

THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.

JEHOVAH having thus abandoned the ten tribes of Israel, we might reasonably expect that the social and political result would have been left to the ordinary course of natural events. The new nation had received a divinely chosen king whose religious policy was, necessarily, foreseen by Jehovah; they were cut off from the head-quarters of their religion, and therefore accepted the golden calves of Dan and Bethel as authentic symbols of the national deity, set up by the Lord's anointed. But respite from prophetic denunciation was of brief duration. The representatives of Jehovah reappeared in the reign of Jeroboam, and renewed social and political anarchy by dooming dynasty after dynasty to purposeless destruction, at the hands of regicides, incited to assassination by predictions which promised them the throne of their victims.

The ostensible purpose of this reign of terror was to punish idolatry; but no change of dynasty relieved successive monarchs from the necessity of holding their own against Judah through independent forms of worship.

We read of Baasha exterminating the house of Jeroboam; Zimri slaying the heirs of Baasha, and terminating his own brief reign of seven days by suicide,

to be replaced by Omri, who plunged the nation into civil war to contest the crown with Tibni.1

1

Omri succeeded in establishing his dynasty, but he wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him.' He was succeeded by his son Ahab, who married the much-abused Jezebel, a princess of the Zidonians, who introduced the worship of Baal into Samaria. How marvellous that Jehovah should have dismembered the empire and destroyed the family of Jeroboam, with no more satisfactory results than the disestablishment of the Mosaic priesthood in favour of the ministers of an alien god!

The famous prophets, Elijah and Elisha, are central figures in the tragic drama of the kingdom of Israel; but, although gifted with supernatural control of the elements, and even masters of life and death, their disastrous intervention in Hebrew affairs simply multiplied the blood-stained pages of the national annals.

If we associate David with modern hypocrisy, Elijah becomes the great prototype of that religious intolerance which inspired mediæval inquisitors, evoked the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and has universally incited hostile theologians to revile, persecute, torture, and murder each other for the honour and glory of God. The priests or prophets of Baal were Phoenicians, attracted to Samaria by the marriage of their countrywoman, and therefore conscientious votaries of the ancestral faith, in which they had been necessarily educated; or Hebrew converts who, with the instincts of courtiers, adopted the fashionable religion, as Pagans became Christians at the bidding of a Constantine, and 1 1 Kings xv., xvi.

Catholics embraced Protestantism in sympathy with a Henry or an Elizabeth. But Elijah admitted no plea of extenuating circumstances for theological error. All who differed from him in his conceptions of the divine had committed an unpardonable offence, meriting a violent death; he therefore became the public executioner of the prophets of Baal, and, having accomplished this work of blood, fled in terror from the vengeance of the queen, who was thus incited to emulation in the pious duty of slaying the prophets of Israel.

We next find the great Nâbi at Mount Carmel, where, with imagination tinged with blood, he heard 'a still small voice,' which whispered words involving murder and assassination! Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when thou comest anoint Hazael to be king of Syria; and Jehu son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel '—in other words, Go, name the servants of kings as their successors, that they may slay their royal masters.

6

The first oracle of the still small voice' was obeyed, not by Elijah, but by Elisha. In 2 Kings viii. we read of Benhadad, king of Syria, sending Hazael to Elisha to inquire whether he would recover from the disease which then afflicted him. Elisha told the messenger to inform the king that he might recover, but would surely die. The prophet then burst into tears, which—as he said—flowed for the appalling cruelties which his auditor would inflict on the children of Israel. Hazael naturally expressed profound astonishment at so improbable an event, and was then informed by Elisha that he should be king of Syria by divine decree.

The murder of Benhadad was, therefore, a foregone