se the time for the feast of the tabernacles was coming
on and many of his people would be going up to Jerusalem.

He therefore, as a part of his scheme, very shrewdly appointed a counter
feast, putting it on the same day of the month, the fifteenth, because
that was the time of the full moon, but he changed the month.

The right time was the seventh month, corresponding with our October and
November, and it was the most joyous of all the festivals celebrating
the gathering of the harvest.

He could plead a good reason for putting his feast a month later,
because the harvest was slower ripening in the northern part of the
kingdom than in the southern, and the change of time would be an
accommodation. The law fixing the seventh month is given (Lev. 23:
34, 39, 41).

At this feast Jeroboam himself approached the altar and served as a
priest. He did this doubtless for two reasons--1, To give the royal
sanction to the new religion; and 2, To show that he considered himself
the religious as well as the civil head of the nation.

LESSONS.

1. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jeroboam
forgot this rule and put the improvement and fortifying of his kingdom
first--his secular affairs--and as a result made a fatal mistake.

2. How long and far a sin reaches! Solomon's idolatry bears fruit in the
breaking up of the nation and the lapse of half of it into heathenism.
What a disappointment to God, who had done and borne so much for this
people!

3. Jeroboam needed to have no fear about the perpetuity of his kingdom.
He had an express promise from God. (1 Kings 11: 38.) But his faith in
God's word failed, and hence he sinned. Thus sin is always the fruit of
unbelief.

4. Jeroboam also put policy before principle; for the sake of temporary
success he turned aside from the strictly right course. This is always
wrong, and because wrong is unsafe. Fasten the lesson deep in your
heart; never for the sake of any apparent advantage depart in the least
from the truth as conscience and God's Word shall make it known to you.

5. It is said in the lesson that Jeroboam devised of his own heart these
religious departures which he forced upon the people. Here was another
feature of his sin--that he presumed to depart from the explicit
directions that God had laid down as to the times, places and manner of
His worship, and gave the people instead inventions of his own. To say
the least, he had no business to do this