hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money."

=Micah's great message.=--It was, of course, the existence of
superstitious fears in the hearts of the people which made it possible
for the priests and the prophets to join with the rich nobles in
preying upon them. "You give me this or that," "You pay for this
sacrifice or that--or I will call down a curse upon you from Jehovah.
Some dreadful misfortune will come upon you." With one great word
whose throbbing pity for the ignorance and sorrow of men makes it
another of the great utterances of human lips, Micah cut the root of
all such fears. Jehovah is not that kind of a God, he declared. He
does not break out in fits of rage. He does not need to be wheedled
back into good nature by costly offerings, perhaps even sometimes with
the costliest offerings of all, one's own darling children.

="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? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born 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 the
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God."=

STUDY TOPICS

1. Read the stories of the ark, referred to in this chapter. See 1
Samuel 6. 1-20; 2 Samuel 6. 1-9. What other way of explaining the
death of Uzzah and of the men of Beth-shemesh occurs to you rather
than the anger of Jehovah? In the case of the men of Beth-shemesh,
read 1 Samuel 5, with its clear indications of contagious disease.

2. How has modern science helped to free mankind from the curse of
superstitious fear?

3. Look up Micah in the Bible dictionary, and find out all you can
about his personal history and work.

4. Are superstition and wrong religious beliefs ever made the means of
extortion and oppression to-day? If so, how?

FOOTNOTES:

[4] 1 Samuel 6. 19, Greek version.

CHAPTER XVIII

ONE JUST GOD OVER ALL PEOPLES

THE MESSAGE OF ISAIAH

The destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrian armies struck
fear into the hearts of the Hebrews of the sister kingdom in the
south. No one had dreamed that such a thing could happen. It is true
that from the beginning of the terrible onrush the Assyrians had been
almos