nation into two;--
the kingdom of Judah to the south, the kingdom of Israel to the
north. And with that division came envy, spite, quarrels; wars
between Israel and Judah, which were but madness. For what could
come of those two brother-nations fighting against each other, but
that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so fall a prey to some
third nation stronger than them both? The ruin of the kingdom of
Israel, of which the text tells us, arose out of some unnatural
quarrel of this kind. Pekah, the king of Israel, had made friends
with the heathen king of Syria, and got him to join in making war on
Judah: and a fearful war it was; for the Israelites, according to
one account, killed in that war a hundred and twenty thousand of the
Jews, men of their own blood and language, all Abraham's descendants
as well as they. On which, Ahaz, king of Judah, not to be behind-
hand in folly, sent to the heathen king of Assyria to help him, just
as the king of Israel had sent to the king of Damascus. He had
better have been dead than to have done that. For those terrible
Assyrians, who had set their hearts on conquering the whole east,
were standing by, watching all the little kingdoms round tearing
themselves to pieces by foolish wars, till they were utterly weak,
and the time was ripe for the Assyrians to pounce upon them. The
king of Assyria came. He swept away all the heathen people of
Damascus, and killed their king. But he did not stop there. In a
very few years, he came on into the land of Israel, besieged Samaria
for three years, and took it, and carried off the whole of the
inhabitants of the country; and there was an end of that miserable
kingdom of Israel, which had been sinking lower and lower ever since
the days of Jeroboam. This was the natural outcome of all their sin
and folly, of which we have been reading for the last few Sundays.

Elijah's warnings had been in vain, and Elisha's warnings also.
They liked, at heart, Ahab's and Jezebel's idolatries better than
they did the worship of the true God. And why? Because, if they
worshipped God, and kept his laws, they must needs have been more or
less good men, upright, just, merciful, cleanly and chaste livers:
while, on the other hand, they might worship their idols, and
nevertheless be as bad as they chose. Indeed, the very idol-feasts
and sacrifices were mixed up with all sorts of filthy sin,
drunkenness and profligacy; so that it is a shame even t