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LESSON FOB JANUARY 22, 1910.
34; 16:2, 19, 26; 21:22; 22:52; I I Kings 33:10, 29, 31; 13:2, 6, 11; 14:24; 15:9, 18, 24, 28; 17:21, 22; 23:15. What an emphasis! His sin was the " c a l v e s ," and they were prolific of sins. Kings and judges of.the earth take heed. Be- tween our lessons a few years, but how much evil! We must read, too, be- tween the lines. The dullest imagina- tion may see there untold sorrows, op- pression, cruelty, vice, diseases, deaths. Jeroboam made his exit. He went out with the doom of his race ringing in his ears. " T h e Lord will bring evil on the house of Jeroboam—cut off—take away —as a man taketh away dung," 14:10. Paul thought the best without Christ but ' ' dung.'' What of the moral worst and waste f A stinking thing. Man alive! Clean up before you go down with eternal doom sounding in the ear of death, and a harvest of sin increasing from age to age. It is as true of wrath as of grace, "A l wa ys more to follow." III. THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE HARVEST. " Na d a b, the son of Jeroboam, began to r e i g n '' and his reign was soon ended. It was a bad record. (1) He did evil. (2) He walked in the steps of a bad father. (3) He caused others to sin. And all " i n the sight of the L o r d ," whose eyes are in every place, behold- ing the evil and good," the Nadab's and the Asa's. The summer was soon ended, Jer. 8:20. The scythe of Baasha mowed him down with " a l l that b r e a t h e d" of "Jeroboam, 15:29. " N ow the rest of the acts of Nadab, and all that he did, are they not written in the Book cf the Chronicles of the Kings of I s r a e l ?" The unabridged edition will be opened "Wh en the sun grows cold, and the books of the Judgment Day un- f o l d ." IV. ANOTHER CROP. Baasha, his ripening took longer. For twelve years he (1) Did evil (2) In the sight of the Lord, (3) and walked in the heaten track, .(4) and led Israel with him. He had been ( I) raised from the dust, (2) made a prince, (3) but followed Jeroboam instead of Je-
Harvesting Jeroboam's Sowing. I Kings 16:15-33. I. GENERAL REFLECTIONS.
The Bible is a Beacon. It shines on the sea of history; not only oh to the horizon of its beginning, but on across the untraversed future. " Wh a t has been shall b e , " said the Preacher, Ece. 3:15. As we say "H i s t o ry repeats it- self. ' ' For like. causes bring like ef- fects. The same moral character, the application of the same moral princi- ples, will produce the same moral con- sequences in the future as in the past. The Bible, all history and biography,. show us how diverse causes worked in the past, that we may adopt the one or the other with understanding of what we may expect. Like causes, like effects; moral causes, moral effects. Not identical in form, as with mechan- ical and chemical forces, but of the same nature, good or evil. Worldliness, selfishness, inordinate ambition, injus- tice, immorality, lasciviousness, must in the long run, produce personal, social, political, moral, or material deteriora- tion, misery, poverty, wretchedness, war, violence, crime and death, more or less widespread as they flow from pri- vate or public personal sources. The reverse as certainly follows the opposite aets and principles. The Bible excells other history and biography as light on the path of life as its instances are de- signed, selected, and applied for moral and spiritual guidance. Its tales are. all " t o point a moral." It is sorrow- ful and suicidal—the failure of nations, families and individuals to throne the Bible in the seat of pre-eminent author- ity in state, school, home, and heart; or, to return to our figure, to set the Beacon on the highest peak to fill its mission of saving men and nations from going to pieces, with the loss of all on board; on the same old rocks of sin and folly. II. JEROBOAM'S JUDGMENT. " T h e sin wherewith Jeroboam caused Israel to s i n ," I Kings 14:16; 15:26, 30,
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