tended to give people a wrong idea of God as one who
was greedy for food and gifts. There was the greater danger of this
wrong idea because of the character of the priests who were supposed
to represent Jehovah. Many of them were very greedy indeed. The story
of Eli's sons in 1 Samuel 2. 12-17 is an illustration. The priests
were supposed to receive for their own personal support a part of all
the gifts which were brought to the shrine. But the sons of Eli made
it the rule that whatever came out of the meat kettle on a
three-pronged fork stuck in by the priest should belong to him. Very
often, it is plain, the priest got everything. And naturally the
people came to think of Jehovah as like his priests--as a Being who
cared only for gifts.

=A worship based on greed.=--The worship of such a god, or of a god
who was thought of as being of such a character, would, of course, be
very far from the love and adoration which we Christians are taught to
offer to our Father, and was really far from the kind of worship
advocated by devout Hebrews. It would be a sort of bargain-hunting
worship: the people to bring gifts of the fat of lambs and libations
of blood and wine, and the god to give them in return good crops of
wheat and oil, and figs and grapes, and an abundance of silver and
gold. If Jehovah would give these things, then worship Jehovah. If
other gods and Baals would give more than Jehovah, worship them.

In short these sacrifices, as Hosea saw, were a kind of worship, and
no worship is a mere formality, but is a vast influence for good or
for ill. Because of these wrong ideas the sacrifices had come to be
more and more an influence for evil. And you cannot have a righteous
and happy human family in which men are just and kind to each other,
without a true worship, growing out of a true idea of God.

HOSEA'S EXPERIENCE AND MESSAGE

This young man from the lovely, grassy plains and valleys east of the
Jordan had had an experience which taught him much. He was by nature
a man with a loving heart. He loved his native land with a burning
patriotism. By and by there came to him, as to most young men, the
experience of a passionate love for a beautiful girl. All the deep
wells of tenderness in Hosea's loving heart were hers, and she became
his wife. For a time they were happy; then little by little it became
clear that this woman, Gomer, did not really love him as he loved her.
She only wanted his money. And when she co