_I have seen the Lord standing over the Altar, and He said, Smite the capital_--of the pillar--_that the very thresholds_[354] _quake, and break them on the head of all of them!_ It is a shock that makes the temple reel from roof-tree to basement. The vision seems subsequent to the prophet's visit to Bethel; and it gathers his whole attack on the national worship into one decisive and irreparable blow. _The last of them will I slay with the sword: there shall not flee away of them one fugitive: there shall not escape of them a_ single _survivor!_ Neither hell nor heaven, mountain-top nor sea-bottom, shall harbour one of them. _If they break through to Sheol, thence shall My hand take them; and if they climb to heaven, thence shall I bring them down. If they hide in Carmel's top, thence will I find them out and fetch them; and if they conceal themselves from before Mine eyes in the bottom of the sea, thence shall I charge the Serpent and he shall bite them; and if they go into captivity before their foes_--to Israel as terrible a distance from God's face as Sheol itself!--_thence will I charge the sword and it shall slay them; and I will set Mine eye upon them for evil and not for good_. It is a ruder draft of the Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Psalm; but the Divine Pursuer is Nemesis, and not Conscience. _And the Lord, Jehovah of the Hosts; Who toucheth the earth and it melteth, and all its inhabitants mourn, and it rises like the Nile, all of it_ together, _and sinks like the Nile of Egypt; Who buildeth His stories in the heavens, and His vault on the earth He foundeth; Who calleth to the waters of the sea and poureth them forth on the face of the earth--Jehovah_ of Hosts _is His Name_.[355] 3. THE VOICES OF ANOTHER DAWN. AMOS ix. 7-15. And now we are come to the part where, as it seems, voices of another day mingle with that of Amos, and silence his judgments in the chorus of their unbroken hope. At first, however, it is himself without doubt who speaks. He takes up the now familiar truth, that when it comes to judgment for sin, Israel is no dearer to Jehovah than any other people of His equal Providence.