ristian who
finds his heart's friends and his chosen companions in people that have
no sympathy with the religion which he professes. It does not say much
for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is
nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian
whom you love most.

Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find
ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long. Godlessness
is infectious. Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a
godless man in the fond hope that she might win him. It is a great deal
more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts
him. Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the
worshippers of idols, lest we 'learn their ways, and get a snare into
our souls.' 'Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers. What fellowship
hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye
separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a
Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.'

'PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE'

'When Ephralm saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went
Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to
heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound.'--HOSEA v. 13
(R.V.).

The long tragedy which ended in the destruction of the Northern Kingdom
by Assyrian invasion was already beginning to develop in Hosea's time.
The mistaken politics of the kings of Israel led them to seek an ally
where they should have dreaded an enemy. As Hosea puts it in figurative
fashion, Ephraim's discovery of his 'sickness' sent him in the vain
quest for help to the apparent source of the 'sickness,' that is to
Assyria, whose king in the text is described by a name which is not his
real name, but is a significant epithet, as the margin puts it, 'a king
that should contend'; and who, of course, was not able to heal nor to
cure the wounds which he had inflicted. Ephraim's suicidal folly is but
one illustration of a universal madness which drives men to seek for the
healing of their misery, and the alleviation of their discomfort, in
the repetition of the very acts which brought these about. The attempt
to get relief in such a fashion, of course, fails; for as the verse
before our text emphatically proclaims, it is God who has been 'as a
moth unto Ephraim,' gnawing away his strength: and it is only He w