But the darkest hue in the dark picture has yet to be added:  ’They are not grieved for the affliction (literally, the ‘breach’ or ‘wound’) of Joseph.’  The tribe of Ephraim, Joseph’s son, being the principal tribe of the Northern Kingdom, Joseph is often employed as a synonym for Israel.  All these pieces of luxury, corrupting and effeminate as they are, might be permitted, but heartless indifference to the miseries groaning at the door of the banqueting-hall goes with them.  ’The classes’ are indifferent to the condition of ‘the masses.’  Put Amos into modern English, and he is denouncing the heartlessness of wealth, refinement, art, and culture, which has no ear for the complaining of the poor, and no eyes to see either the sorrows and sins around it, or the lowering cloud that is ready to burst in tempest.

The inevitable issue is certain, because of the very nature of God.  It is outlined with keen irony.  Amos sees in imagination the long procession of sad captives, and marching in the front ranks, the self-indulgent Sybarites, whose pre-eminence is now only the melancholy prerogative of going first in the fettered train.  What has become of their revelry?  It is gone, like the imaginary banquets of dreams, and instead of luxurious lolling on silken couches, there is the weary tramp of the captive exiles.  Such result must be, since God is what He is.  He has sworn ‘by Himself’; His being and character are the pledge that it will be so as Amos has declared.  How can such a God as He is do otherwise than hate the pride of such a selfish, heartless, God-forgetting aristocracy?  How can He do otherwise than deliver up the city?  God has not changed, and though His mills grind slowly, they do grind still; and it is as true for England and America, as it was for Samaria, that a wealthy and leisurely upper class, which cares only for material luxury glossed over by art, which has condescended to be its servant, is bringing near the evil day which it hugs itself into believing will never come.

RIPE FOR GATHERING

’Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me:  and behold a basket of summer fruit. 2.  And He said, Amos, what seest thou?  And I said, A basket of summer fruit.  Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon My people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. 3.  And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God:  there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence. 4.  Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail. 5.  Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? 6.  That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? 7.  The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob,