, as breaking out again in their own
times; and in our own lifetime earthquake and fire have done fearful
destruction in the north part of the Holy Land.

Now what was to prevent the Israelites worshipping the earthquake
and the fire as gods?

Nothing. Conceive the terror and horror of the Jews coming out of
that quiet land of Egypt, the first time they felt the ground
rocking and rolling; the first time they heard the roar of the
earthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the
magnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys
cleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place;
and discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of
fire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew
not when.

What could they do, but what the Canaanites did who dwelt already in
that land? What but to say, 'The fire is king. The fire is the
great and dreadful God, and to him we must pray, lest he devour us
up.' For so did the Canaanites. They called the fire Moloch, which
means simply the king; and they worshipped this fire-king, and made
idols of him, and offered human sacrifices to him. They had idols
of metal, before which an everlasting fire burned; and on the arms
of the idol the priests laid the children who were to be sacrificed,
that they might roll down into the fire and be burnt alive. That is
actual fact. In one case, which we know of well, hundreds of years
after Moses' time, the Carthaginians offered two hundred boys of
their best families to Moloch in one day. This is that making the
children pass through the fire to Moloch--burning them in the fire
to Moloch--of which we read several times in the Old Testament; as
ugly and accursed a superstition as men ever invented.

What deliverance was there for them from these abominable
superstitions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was God's
kingdom, and not Moloch's at all; to know with Micah and with David
that the hills were molten like wax BEFORE THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD;
that it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations
of the world; that it was HE who made the sea flee and drove back
the Jordan stream; that it was before HIM that the mountains skipped
like rams and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of
shaking were God's battles, with which he could fight for his
people; that it was he who ordained Tophet, and whose spirit kindled
it. That it was he