He could plead a good reason for putting his feast a month later, because the harvest was slower ripening in the northern part of the kingdom than in the southern, and the change of time would be an accommodation. The law fixing the seventh month is given (Lev. 23: 34, 39, 41). At this feast Jeroboam himself approached the altar and served as a priest. He did this doubtless for two reasons--1, To give the royal sanction to the new religion; and 2, To show that he considered himself the religious as well as the civil head of the nation. LESSONS. 1. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jeroboam forgot this rule and put the improvement and fortifying of his kingdom first--his secular affairs--and as a result made a fatal mistake. 2. How long and far a sin reaches! Solomon's idolatry bears fruit in the breaking up of the nation and the lapse of half of it into heathenism. What a disappointment to God, who had done and borne so much for this people! 3. Jeroboam needed to have no fear about the perpetuity of his kingdom. He had an express promise from God. (1 Kings 11: 38.) But his faith in God's word failed, and hence he sinned. Thus sin is always the fruit of unbelief. 4. Jeroboam also put policy before principle; for the sake of temporary success he turned aside from the strictly right course. This is always wrong, and because wrong is unsafe. Fasten the lesson deep in your heart; never for the sake of any apparent advantage depart in the least from the truth as conscience and God's Word shall make it known to you. 5. It is said in the lesson that Jeroboam devised of his own heart these religious departures which he forced upon the people. Here was another feature of his sin--that he presumed to depart from the explicit directions that God had laid down as to the times, places and manner of His worship, and gave the people instead inventions of his own. To say the least, he had no business to do this, and he exposed himself to the curse that comes upon those who take from or add to God's Word. ILLUSTRATIONS. "On mission ground there was once a prayer meeting held in an idol temple. A lamp was placed in the hands or lap of each idol around the room, so that the idols themselves held the light by which the true God was worshiped. So the sins of Jeroboam may light us to heaven." --_Peloubet._ "Judge a religion by its god. Judge a people by the kind of god that will satisfy them. If a calf will do, what must be their intelligence? If nature will do, what must be their emotion? If science will do, what must be their moral sense? The Christian religion pays the highest tribute to human intelligence. It calls men to a God, infinite in every perfection." --_Joseph Parker._ "It has been remarked that the two tribes in whose inheritance the calves stood are not found among the number of the sealed in Revelations. The names of Ephraim and Dan are missing from that list." --_Waller._