ts, or personal ill-wishers, and the men whom they try to warn
fancy that they hinder the coming of a day of retribution by
disbelieving in its coming. Incredulity is no lightning-conductor to
keep off the flash, and, listened to or not, the low growls of the
thunder are coming nearer.

With one hand these sinners tried to push away the evil day, while with
the other they drew near to themselves that which made its coming
certain--'the seat of violence,' or, rather, 'the sitting,' or
'session.' Violence, or wrongdoing, is enthroned by them, and where men
enthrone iniquity, God's day of vengeance is not far off.

Then follows a graphic picture of the senseless, corrupting luxury of
the Samaritan magnates, on which the Tekoan shepherd pours his scorn,
but which is simplicity itself, and almost asceticism, before what he
would see if he came to London or New York. To him it seemed effeminate
to loll on a divan at meals, and possibly it was a custom imported from
abroad. It is noted that 'the older custom in Israel was to sit while
eating.' The woodwork of the divans, inlaid with ivory, had caught his
eye in some of his peeps into the great houses, and he inveighs against
them very much as one of the Pilgrim Fathers might do if he could see
the furniture in the drawing-rooms of some of his descendants. There is
no harm in pretty things, but the aesthetic craze does sometimes indicate
and increase selfish heartlessness as to the poverty and misery, which
have not only no ivory on their divans, but no divans at all. Thus
stretched in unmanly indolence on their cushions, they feast on
delicacies. 'Lambs out of the flock' and 'calves out of the stall' seem
to mean animals too young to be used as food. These gourmands, like
their successors, prided themselves on having dainties out of season,
because they were more costly then. And their feasts had the adornment
of music, which the shepherd, who knew only the pastoral pipe that
gathered his sheep, refers to with contempt. He uses a very rare word of
uncertain meaning, which is probably best rendered in some such way as
the Revised Version does: 'They sing idle songs.' To him their
elaborate performances seemed like empty babble. Worse than that, they
'devise musical instruments like David.' But how unlike him in the use
they make of art! What a descent from the praises of God to the 'idle
songs' fit for the hot dining-halls and the guests there! Amos was
indignant at the profan