="Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."= STUDY TOPICS 1. Read the stories of the ark, referred to in this chapter. See 1 Samuel 6. 1-20; 2 Samuel 6. 1-9. What other way of explaining the death of Uzzah and of the men of Beth-shemesh occurs to you rather than the anger of Jehovah? In the case of the men of Beth-shemesh, read 1 Samuel 5, with its clear indications of contagious disease. 2. How has modern science helped to free mankind from the curse of superstitious fear? 3. Look up Micah in the Bible dictionary, and find out all you can about his personal history and work. 4. Are superstition and wrong religious beliefs ever made the means of extortion and oppression to-day? If so, how? FOOTNOTES: [4] 1 Samuel 6. 19, Greek version. CHAPTER XVIII ONE JUST GOD OVER ALL PEOPLES THE MESSAGE OF ISAIAH The destruction of the northern kingdom by the Assyrian armies struck fear into the hearts of the Hebrews of the sister kingdom in the south. No one had dreamed that such a thing could happen. It is true that from the beginning of the terrible onrush the Assyrians had been almost irresistible. All the little nations which had stood in their way had been swallowed up. Moreover, the prophets Amos and Hosea had plainly foretold that some such calamity would be sent upon Israelites by Jehovah on account of their sins. But very few of them believed these brave and lonely preachers of the truth. "Jehovah send the Assyrians against us! Why, that is absurd! We are Jehovah's people, and he is our God. What has he to do with the Assyrians? He may chastise us, but not by sending foreign armies to conquer us. What would he do if we should be conquered? He would have no nation to worship him." So they reasoned. =Jehovah too weak to protect his people?=--When, therefore, the Assyrians actually did come marching down from the Euphrates River, hundreds of thousands of them with their gleaming armor and their multitudes of horses and war chariots, and besieged and captured the city of Samaria, leaving it a ruin, most of the Hebrews, north and south, were sick with fear and bewilderment. For them with their false notions it could mean only one thing: their God, Jehovah, was too weak to protect his people against the greater gods of Nineveh. The Assyrians said to them: