. If one
fancies a godly Scottish Highlander sent to the West end of London, or a
Bible-reading New England farmer's man sent to New York's 'upper ten,'
one will have some notion of this prophet, the impressions made, and the
task laid on him. He has a message to our state of society which, in
many particulars, resembles that which he had to rebuke.

There seems to be a slight dislocation in the order of the verses of the
passage, for verse 7 comes in awkwardly, breaking the connection between
verses 6 and 8, and itself cut off from verse 10, to which it belongs.
If we remove the intruding verse to a position after verse 9, the whole
passage is orderly and falls into three coherent parts: an exhortation
to seek Jehovah, enforced by various considerations (vs. 4-9); a
vehement denunciation of social vices (vs. 7, 10-13); and a renewed
exhortation to seek God by doing right to man (vs. 14, 15).

Amos's first call to Israel is but the echo of God's to men, always and
everywhere. All circumstances, all inward experiences, joy and sorrow,
prosperity and disaster, our longings and our fears, they all cry aloud
to us to seek His face. That loving invitation is ever sounding in our
ears. And the promise which Amos gave, though it may have meant on his
lips the continuance of national life only, yet had, even on his lips, a
deeper meaning, which we now cannot but hear in it. For, just as to
'seek the Lord' means more to us than it did to Israel, so the
consequent life has greatened, widened, deepened into life eternal. But
Amos's narrower, more external promise is true still, and there is no
surer way of promoting true well-being than seeking God. 'With Thee is
the fountain of life,' in all senses of the word, from the lowest purely
physical to the highest, and it is only they who go thither to draw that
will carry away their pitchers full of the sparkling blessing. The
fundamental principle of Amos's teaching is an eternal truth, that to
seek God is to find Him, and to find Him is life.

But Amos further teaches us that such seeking is not real nor able to
find, unless it is accompanied with turning away from all sinful quests
after vanities. We must give up seeking Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba,
seats of the calf worship, if we are to seek God to purpose. The sin of
the Northern Kingdom was that it wanted to worship Jehovah under the
symbol of the calves, thus trying to unite two discrepant things. And is
not a great deal of