_First citizen:_ I had loaned some money to an old farmer, and made him pledge me his field as security. Last summer the Babylonian soldiers came through that valley and burned all the wheat and barley stacks. So the old man couldn't pay back the loan. He tried to tell his story to King Jehoiakim, but the king drove him from the palace. So I went and took his field. _Second citizen:_ What would the prophets have said to a transaction like that? Did not Isaiah call down woes from Jehovah on those who took away poor men's fields? _First citizen:_ I have just offered a sacrifice to Jehovah. _Second citizen:_ I suppose, then, it is all right. But did not the prophets speak against sacrifice, unless one remembered justice and mercy? _First citizen:_ Yes, but they were speaking of the old sacrifices on the "high places," at the village shrines. Everyone knows they were heathen shrines and hateful to Jehovah. I offered my sacrifice at the temple yonder, just as we are told to do in the law of Moses, which King Josiah's servants found in the temple. Look! Why is all that crowd gathered over there in the temple yard? Let us go and see what is happening. I heard some one say, that a certain Jeremiah who calls himself a prophet, was to speak there to-day. All my friends who have heard him say that he is a false prophet. (They reach the edge of the crowd. Jeremiah is standing on the steps of the temple, addressing the people, as follows:) ="Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow ... then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old even forevermore. Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, ... and come and stand before me in this house, ... and say, We are delivered; that ye may do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?"= JEREMIAH'S MESSAGE OF A HEART RELIGION It is clear that Jeremiah was fighting the same old battle that Amos and the other prophets had fought against a religion of mere empty ceremonies. But the battle had grown even harder, because the old false practices had been accepted as though they were just the kind of religion that Amos had preached. The people said, "We are keeping the law of Jehovah," and so they were satisfied with themselves.