go, making a tinkling with their
feet, therefore ... the Lord will take away the bravery of their
tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round
tires like the moon, the chains and the bracelets and the mufflers,
the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the headbands, the
tablets and the earrings, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable
suits of apparel and the mantles and the wimples and the crisping
pins, the glasses and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils; and
it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be
stink, and instead of a girdle a rent, and instead of well-set hair
baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girdle of sackcloth, and
burning instead of beauty."

Then there was Oppression. Excessive luxury in the upper classes is
usually accompanied with misery among those at the opposite end of the
social scale; because the rich in such a state of society are
heartless, and not only neglect the poor, but oppress them. The
prophets are full of the wrongs inflicted on the weak by the powerful.
The wealthy landowners took advantage of the difficulties of their
less prosperous neighbours to rob them of their holdings and remove
the ancient landmarks; and the courts of law were so corrupt that
those who could not bribe the occupants of the chair of justice had no
chance of redress. The spirit of the constitution was so far violated
that the rich held their own fellow-countrymen in slavery, and did not
even give them the advantage of the year of jubilee. Many a page of
the writings of the prophets looks like a programme for the reform of
abuses with which we are too familiar in our own civilisation. "Woe,"
says Jeremiah, "to him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and
his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's services without
wages and giveth him not for his work."

Last of all there was Hypocrisy. In spite of these sins, crying to
Heaven, there was seldom any lack of religiosity or the outward forms
of religion. Religion was divorced from morality, and ritual was
substituted for righteousness. There is no commoner or weightier
burden in the prophets than this. It is on this subject that Isaiah
lets loose the whole force of his prophetic soul in his very first
chapter, where there is a truly appalling picture of the combination
of religious rites the most multiplied with moral abuses the most
clamant: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifi