Luxury, then, and a very sensual conception of religion, with all their vicious offspring in the abuse of justice, the oppression of the poor, the corrupting of the innocent, and the intolerance of spiritual forces--these are the sins of an enlightened and civilised people, which Amos describes as worse than all the atrocities of barbarism, and as certain of Divine vengeance. How far beyond his own day are his words still warm! Here in the nineteenth century is Great Britain, destroyer of the slave-traffic, and champion of oppressed nationalities--yet this great and Christian people, at the very time they are abolishing slavery, suffer their own children to work in factories and clay-pits for sixteen hours a day, and in mines set women to a labour for which horses are deemed too valuable. Things improve after 1848, but how slowly and against what callousness of Christians Lord Shaftesbury's long and often disappointed labours painfully testify. Even yet our religious public, that curses the Turk, and in an indignation, which can never be too warm, cries out against the Armenian atrocities, is callous, nay, by the avarice of some, the haste and passion for enjoyment of many more, and the thoughtlessness of all, itself contributes, to conditions of life and fashions of society, which bear with cruelty upon our poor, taint our literature, needlessly increase the temptations of our large towns, and render pure childlife impossible among masses of our population. Along some of the highways of our Christian civilisation we are just as cruel and just as lustful as Kurd or Turk. * * * * * Amos closes this prophecy with a vision of immediate judgment. _Behold, I am about to crush_ or _squeeze down upon you, as a waggon crushes_[266] _that is full of sheaves._[267] An alternative reading supplies the same general impression of a crushing judgment: _I will make the ground quake under you, as a waggon makes it quake,_ or _as a waggon_ itself _quakes under its load of sheaves_. This shock is to be War. _Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not prove his power, nor the mighty man escape with his life. And he that graspeth the bow shall not stand, nor shall the swift of foot escape, nor the horseman escape with his life. And he that thinketh himself strong among the heroes shall flee away naked in that day--'tis the oracle of Jehovah._ FOOTNOTES: [209] As is done in chap. vi. 2, ix. 7. [210] So against Israel in chap. iv. [211] So Isa. v. 25: נטויה ידו ועוד אפו שב לא Cf. Ezek. xx. 22: ידי את והשיבותי [212] פשעים [213] Called _lûh_, _i.e._ slab. [214] These Syrian campaigns in Gilead must have taken place between 839 and 806, the long interval during which Damascus enjoyed freedom from Assyrian invasion. [215] 2 Kings viii. 12; xiii. 7: cf. above, p. 31. [216] _He delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Aram, and into the hand of Ben-Hadad the son of Hazael, continually_ (2 Kings xiii. 3).