ces to Me?
saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of rams
or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required
this at your hands, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations;
incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the
solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul
hateth; they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them. And, when
ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when
ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
Wash you; make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve
the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow."

Thus did these watchmen search out the moral and religious condition
of the people to the very bottom and, in the most expressive language,
bring home to their fellow-countrymen how they stood in the eyes of
God.

2. A second large mass of the prophetic writings is occupied with
Denunciation, or the prediction of calamities about to come as the
punishment of sin. As sure as the prophets were that the God of the
universe was a righteous God, so certain were they that the public
sins which they exposed would bring down the wrath of Heaven; for
"though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."

The instruments of punishment were not far to seek. Israel was
surrounded by nations which entertained towards her feelings of bitter
hostility and needed only the slightest provocation to attack her.
Such were Edom and Moab, Philistia and Syria. But, above all, she was
hemmed in on both sides by great and warlike powers--Egypt on the one
hand and Assyria or Babylonia on the other. These were incessantly
watching each other, and, in doing so, they had to look across Israel.
She lay in the way which the one had to take in order to get at the
other. The secular historian would say that she could not but fall
sooner or later into the hands of the one or the other, and that she
would probably pass frequently from hand to hand. But to the prophets
these warlike powers were the scourges in God's hand to punish the
sins of His people; and, looking outwards from their watch-tower,
after exposing the sins within the state, they announced that t