expresses it by adding to his list of musical instruments 'and wine' as
if he would underscore the degradation of the great art to be the
cupbearer of sots. Such revellers are blind to the manifest tokens of
God's working, and the 'operation of His hands' excites only the tipsy
gaze which sees nothing. That is one of the curses which dog the
drunkard-that he takes no warning from the plain results of his vice as
seen in others. He knows that it means shattered health, ruined
prospects, broken hearts, but nothing rouses him from his fancy of
impunity. High, serious thoughts of God and His government of the world
and of each life are strange to him. His sin compels him to be godless,
if he is not to go mad. But sometimes he wakes to a moment's sight of
realities, and then he is miserable till his next bout buys fatal
forgetfulness.

The prophet forces the end of a drunken nation on the unwilling
attention of the roisterers, in verses 13-17, which throb with vehemence
of warning and gloomy eloquence. What can such a people come to but
destruction? Knowledge must languish, hunger and thirst must follow.
Like some monster's gaping mouth, the pit yawns for them; and, drawn as
by irresistible attraction, the pomp and the wicked, senseless jollity
elide down into it. In the universal catastrophe, one thing alone stands
upright, and is lifted higher, because all else has sunk so far,-the
righteous judgment of the forgotten God. The grim picture is as true for
individuals and their deaths as for a nation and its decay. And modern
nations cannot afford to have this ulcer of drunkenness draining away
their strength any more than Judah could. 'By the soul only are the
nations great and free,' and a people can be neither where the drink
fiend has his way.

Three woes follow which are closely connected. That pronounced on daring