often, it is plain, the priest got everything. And naturally the
people came to think of Jehovah as like his priests--as a Being who
cared only for gifts.

=A worship based on greed.=--The worship of such a god, or of a god
who was thought of as being of such a character, would, of course, be
very far from the love and adoration which we Christians are taught to
offer to our Father, and was really far from the kind of worship
advocated by devout Hebrews. It would be a sort of bargain-hunting
worship: the people to bring gifts of the fat of lambs and libations
of blood and wine, and the god to give them in return good crops of
wheat and oil, and figs and grapes, and an abundance of silver and
gold. If Jehovah would give these things, then worship Jehovah. If
other gods and Baals would give more than Jehovah, worship them.

In short these sacrifices, as Hosea saw, were a kind of worship, and
no worship is a mere formality, but is a vast influence for good or
for ill. Because of these wrong ideas the sacrifices had come to be
more and more an influence for evil. And you cannot have a righteous
and happy human family in which men are just and kind to each other,
without a true worship, growing out of a true idea of God.


HOSEA'S EXPERIENCE AND MESSAGE

This young man from the lovely, grassy plains and valleys east of the
Jordan had had an experience which taught him much. He was by nature
a man with a loving heart. He loved his native land with a burning
patriotism. By and by there came to him, as to most young men, the
experience of a passionate love for a beautiful girl. All the deep