=Amos' dire forebodings.=--In many addresses, as reported in the book which bears his name, with bitter and thrilling eloquence Amos tried to drive home this great message to the hearts of his fellow countrymen. He warned them that unless they heeded, disaster would come to the nation. For as surely as Jehovah demanded justice, so surely would he punish injustice. Terrible are his pictures of the calamities with which the guilty Israelites would be visited. Nor did he appeal wholly to fear. There is now and then a pleading note in Amos. Honest and burning indignation and threats are indeed most common in the pages of his book; yet listen to this: ="Thus the Lord God showed me: and, behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth ... and ... when they made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee: how shall Jacob stand? for he is small."= There speaks the shepherd pleading for his little sheep--"How can Jacob stand, for he is small?" THE RESULTS OF AMOS' WORDS Amos' mission to the northern kingdom seemed to be a failure. He had come up from his sheep tending, in his home in Tekoa, in Judah, because he felt burning within him a message for his people. But he soon went home. The chief priest at Bethel drove him out. And apparently the people did not care. No doubt even the poor people in whose cause Amos had so eloquently spoken were shocked by his words. "What, are not our sacrifices holy and pleasing to Jehovah? Would he have us stop offering up burnt-offerings? That is almost blasphemous." =Bread upon the waters.=--Yet there were some who listened. And the proof is found in the existence of the book of Amos in the Bible. Some one cared enough to preserve and copy the first manuscript of Amos' sermons and to make still other copies. Another proof is the fact that within that same century three other supremely great religious teachers caught up his great idea of a new kind of religion and repeated it in new and wonderfully convincing ways. Of these other prophets we shall learn more in the chapters to follow. STUDY TOPICS 1. Glance over the book of Leviticus, also the latter part of Exodus, and the book of Numbers. How important did the Hebrews evidently consider the carrying out of sacrifices? 2. Look up in the Bible dictionary Jeroboam II and Amos. Find out more (1) about the times in which Amos lived and (2) about his personal history and character. 3. Read as much as you can in the book of Amos: chapters 1 and 2 and 7 and 8 are most important for our study. 4. Are religious ceremonies ever substituted to-day for the religion of justice and right? If so, explain how. CHAPTER XVI A NEW KIND OF WORSHIP Amos seemed to think of sacrifices and burnt-offerings as mere formalities which distracted men's attention from the thing of real importance, namely, just and righteous dealing between man and his neighbor.