We ought to pass, then, straight from the third to the sixth verse of this chapter, from the oracles on foreign nations to that on Northern Israel. It is introduced with the same formula as they are: _Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Israel and because of four I will not turn It back_. But there follow a greater number of details, for Amos has come among his own people whom he knows to the heart, and he applies to them a standard more exact and an obligation more heavy than any he could lay to the life of the heathen. Let us run quickly through the items of his charge. _For that they sell an honest man_[262] _for silver, and a needy man for a pair of shoes_--proverbial, as we should say "for an old song"--_who trample to the dust of the earth the head of the poor_--the least improbable rendering of a corrupt passage[263]--_and pervert the way of humble men. And a man and his father will go into the maid_, the same maid,[264] _to desecrate My Holy Name_--without doubt some public form of unchastity introduced from the Canaanite worship into the very sanctuary of Jehovah, the holy place where He reveals His Name--_and on garments given in pledge they stretch themselves by every altar, and the wine of those who have been fined they drink in the house of their God_. A riot of sin: the material of their revels is the miseries of the poor, its stage the house of God! Such is religion to the Israel of Amos' day--indoors, feverish, sensual. By one of the sudden contrasts he loves, Amos sweeps out of it into God's ideal of religion--a great historical movement, told in the language of the open air: national deliverance, guidance on the highways of the world, the inspiration of prophecy, and the pure, ascetic life. _But I, I destroyed the Amorite_[265] _before you, whose height was as the cedars, and he was strong as oaks, and I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from below._ What a contrast to the previous picture of the temple filled with fumes of wine and hot with lust! We are out on open history; God's gales blow and the forests crash before them. _And I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you through the wilderness forty years, to inherit the land of the Amorite._ Religion is not chambering and wantonness; it is not selfish comfort or profiting by the miseries of the poor and the sins of the fallen. But religion is history--the freedom of the people and their education, the winning of the land and the defeat of the heathen foe; and then, when the land is firm and the home secure, it is the raising, upon that stage and shelter, of spiritual guides and examples. _And I raised up of your sons to be prophets, and of your young men to be Nazirites_--consecrated and ascetic lives. _Is it not so, O children of Israel? (oracle of Jehovah). But ye made the Nazirites drink wine, and the prophets ye charged, saying, Prophesy not!_