The remonstrance addressed by the prophet of the Lord to Amaziah was well grounded; his argument was conclusive. We arc simply astonished at -

I. THE INFATUATION OF IDOLATRY. What insensate folly of the King of Judah to turn from the service of Jehovah, who had just granted him a signal proof of his power and his goodness, to the service and the worship of the gods of the very people he had defeated (ver. 14)! Well might he be reproached for conduct so culpable and so irrational. Any one who was conversant with the history of the Hebrew people, even up to this time, might have known that faithfulness to Jehovah was accompanied by victory and prosperity, and that, contrariwise, idolatry was attended with misery and disaster. And yet, such was "the deceitfulness of sin," we find king and courtier, priest and people, lapsing into disobedience and iniquity. We are not now under the temptation which proved too strong for Amaziah, but we may make a mistake as serious and as senseless as he made.

II. THE FOLLY OF IRRELIGION, AND ESPECIALLY OF SPIRITUAL UNFAITHFULNESS. For what is it that we see?

1. A large number of men and women honouring various false gods; it is some form of temporal success; it may be physical enjoyment, or it may be the possession of wealth, or it may be social position, or it may be political power, or it may be professional distinction.

2. These votaries are not blessed by the deities they are serving; for these "powers" are weakness itself; they "cannot. deliver their own people," their own adherents. They do not deliver them from failure, from disappointment, from heartache, from misery. They do not gladden the heart and brighten and beautify the life of those who are seeking and serving them. Even those who have reached the heights they set themselves to climb, who have grasped the goal towards which they ran, have confessed, again and again, that they have not found rest unto their soul, but rather disquietude, craving, envy - a sense of dreariness and defeat. Why, then, should we add our souls to the number of the unblessed, of the deceived and the betrayed? Why, indeed, should we who have tasted of better things be so indescribably foolish as to abandon "our Rock" for "their rock" (Deuteronomy 32:31)? Why should we seek after the "gods that cannot deliver their own people"? And this folly is the greater when we take into our account -

III. THE PROVED WISDOM OF PIETY. For has it not been abundantly confirmed that "godliness has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come"? Do not we who have followed Christ know, and can we not testify, that to be his true disciple, his faithful servant - this is to be:

1. Gladdened with all joy.

2. Comforted in all sorrow.

3. Enlarged in all obscurity and lowliness of sphere.

4. Engaged in the best and noblest of all works - the work of human elevation.

5. Sustained by the most exalted hope - the hope of everlasting life in his own royal presence. - C.

To act like Amaziah — to go out to battle in the name of Jehovah, directed and encouraged by His prophet, to conquer by the grace of the God of Israel, and then to desert Jehovah of hosts, the giver of victory, for the paltry and discredited idols of the conquered Edomites — this was sheer madness. And yet as Greece enslaved her Roman conquerors, so the victor has often been won to the faith of the vanquished. The Church subdued the barbarians who had overwhelmed the empire, and the heathen Saxons adopted at last the religion of the conquered Britons.

(W. H. Bennett, M.A.)