It is a great step forward to the time when Amos has his contests with the priest of Bethel; contests with priests both true and false were repeated generation by generation. These literary prophets manifest a splendid individualism. With them there were no guilds, no mechanism of religion, no shrines and no wonders. Their great messages are in the beginning essentially ethical messages. They are addressed to their own people and to their own time. They deal not alone with personal conduct, but with messages of political wisdom, revealing keenness of insight, as well as righteousness of aim. The qualities that made these writings immortal are not vague and doubtful forecasts of particular events, but they tingle through and through with a conception of righteousness, scorn of dishonor, and hatred of the lie. And this is not all. From the first to the last of them they speak an abiding faith in the final triumph of righteousness. The psalm of hope cannot die out of their hearts. Not all of them were so radiant and glowing as the great prophet who wrote hymns to take the place of those psalms of Zion which the captives could not sing by the rivers of Babylon. Let others hang their harps on the willows. His mighty hand should strike from one harp a note of triumph so distinct that the music still lives in the world and can never die until the sun grows cold.

CHAPTER VIII

SACRED PLACES

THE ALTAR

EVERY religion has had its sacred places. Naturally, the nature of the religion has influenced the conception of the sacred place. There have been holy caves, holy fountains, holy trees, holy altars, holy temples, and holy areas of land sometimes not inclosed at all or inclosed by walls. Ancestor worshipers have had a tendency to make their tombs places devoted to their religion. Sacred trees and fountains have come into nature worship, and it may be that sacred caves have even descended from the cave dwellers. The sacred place shows a development parallel to that of the sacred man. Among the Hebrews, as among most peoples, the altars were older than temples. The first recorded altar is that of Noah built unto the Lord upon landing from his voyage, when he took of every clean beast and every clean fowl and offered them. This altar was probably of earth, and that seems to have been the primitive form. An ancient law reads: "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me

and shalt sacrifice thereon; in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee" (Ex. xx. 24). The expression "all places where I record my name" is significant as indicating the general origin of sacred places.

In the account of the wanderings of Abraham when he moved unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, he built an altar unto the Lord after having pitched his tent and called upon the name of the Lord (Gen. xii. 8). Where the ark is said to have landed and where Abraham pitched his tent in the promised land, there was sufficient community of interest between God and man for an altar to be erected. But once again Abraham returns to Bethel: "He came unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and there Abram called on the name of the Lord." This recurrent visit indicates the growth of holy places, and so Bethel, renewed again and again in the history of Israel by sacred transactions, became at last permanently one of the holy places of Israel. It may not have been wholly by accident that Jacob set up his pillar at Bethel, or it may be that this was some other place but still chosen as a House of God because of the holy dream.

At a later time in the history of Jacob, the Lord commanded him to "arise, go up to Bethel and dwell

there, and make there an altar unto God;" and we read further that Jacob took from his people in preparation for this worship, all their strange gods, and their earrings, and "Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem." Here is a notice of the holy tree and the beginning of another holy shrine. Shechem, too, is a place honored by a visit from Abraham. It was where Joshua uttered his farewell to Israel, and "there he took a great stone and set up there under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord," and here went the ten tribes to set up Rehoboam as king.

Another of the sacred places of Israel was the town called Hebron. It was here also that Abram rested his tent for a long residence and built there an altar unto the Lord. The place was further sanctified by the memorable theophany when the. Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamreh and "he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day."

And after the great battle of Israel with Amalek, Moses set up an altar and called the name of it "The Lord my Banner."

It is evident that the erection of an altar was proper in any place of significance, and in the days of the making of Israel recorded in Judges and Samuel, there were altars in many places. The

general law was that sacred history made the location of the events also sacred.

In like manner there were certain sacred mountains, Mt. Sinai by way of preeminence, but also Mt. Moriah with Gerizim and Ebal.

The earlier law had suggested earth as the proper material for an altar. We come to the time of Solomon's temple, and here we find an altar made of brass. According to the chronicler this altar was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and ten cubits high, but notwithstanding the size of this altar, it was necessary for the king to hallow the middle of the court, and there he offered burntofferings and meat-offerings, evidently upon an altar of earth according to the ancient law. The altar of stone was permitted in the law though it was not to be hewn stone, but there is no account of any authority for a brazen altar.

But it was going further away from the traditions of the fathers when King Ahaz, on a ceremonial visit at Damascus to Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, saw an altar that pleased him at Damascus and sent to his principal priest, Urijah, the fashion of the altar and the pattern of it, according to all the workmanship thereof, that a copy might be made for him; and when Ahaz had returned from Damascus he found the altar