ation of art, and thought it best used in the
service of God. What would he have said if he had been 'fastened into a
front-row box' and treated to a modern opera?

The revellers 'drink wine in bowls' by which larger vessels than
generally employed are intended. They drank to excess, or as we might
say, by bucketfuls. So the dainty feast, with its artistic refinement
and music, ends at last in a brutal carouse, and the heads anointed with
the most costly unguents drop in drunken slumber. A similar picture of
Samaritan manners is drawn by Isaiah (chap. xxviii.), and obviously
drunkenness was one of the besetting sins of the capital.

But the darkest hue in the dark picture has yet to be added: 'They are
not grieved for the affliction (literally, the 'breach' or 'wound') of
Joseph.' The tribe of Ephraim, Joseph's son, being the principal tribe
of the Northern Kingdom, Joseph is often employed as a synonym for
Israel. All these pieces of luxury, corrupting and effeminate as they
are, might be permitted, but heartless indifference to the miseries
groaning at the door of the banqueting-hall goes with them. 'The
classes' are indifferent to the condition of 'the masses.' Put Amos into
modern English, and he is denouncing the heartlessness of wealth,
refinement, art, and culture, which has no ear for the complaining of
the poor, and no eyes to see either the sorrows and sins around it, or
the lowering cloud that is ready to burst in tempest.

The inevitable issue is certain, because of the very nature of God. It
is outlined with keen irony. Amos sees in imagination the long
procession of sad captives, and marching in the front ranks, the
self-indulgent Sybarites, whose pre-eminence is now only the melancholy
prerogative of going first in the fettered train. What has become of
their revelry? It is gone, like the imaginary banquets of dreams, and
instead of luxurious lolling on silken couches, there is the weary tramp
of the captive exiles. Such result must be, since God is what He is. He
has sworn 'by Himself'; His being and character are the pledge that it
will be so as Amos has declared. How can such a God as He is do
otherwise than hate the pride of such a selfish, heartless,
God-forgetting aristocracy? How can He do otherwise than deliver up the
city? God has not changed, and though His mills grind slowly, they do
grind still; and it is as true for England and America, as it was for
Samaria, that a wealthy and leisurely up