to their own company’—­there is a natural affinity which should, and will, if our faith is vital, draw us to those who, on the gravest and solemnest things, have the same thoughts, the same hopes, the same faith.  I do not urge you, God knows, to be bigoted and narrow, and shut yourselves up in your faith, and leave the world to go to the devil; but I do not wish, either, that Christian people should fling themselves into the arms and nestle in the hearts of persons who do not share with them ‘like precious faith.’

I am sure that there are many Christian people, old and young, who are suffering in their religious life because they are neglecting this commandment of my text.  ‘Let him alone.’  There can be no deep affection, and, most of all—­if I may venture on such ground—­no wedded love worth the name, where there is not unanimity in regard to the deepest matters.  It does not say much for the religion of a professing Christian who finds his heart’s friends and his chosen companions in people that have no sympathy with the religion which he professes.  It does not say much for you if it is so with you, for the Christian, whom you like least, is nearer you in the depths of your true self than is the non-Christian whom you love most.

Be sure, too, that if we mix ourselves up with Ephraim, we shall find ourselves grovelling beside him before his idols ere long.  Godlessness is infectious.  Many a young woman, a professing Christian, has married a godless man in the fond hope that she might win him.  It is a great deal more frequently the case that he perverts her than that she converts him.  Do not let us knit ourselves in these close bonds with the worshippers of idols, lest we ’learn their ways, and get a snare into our souls.’  ’Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.  What fellowship hath light with darkness?  Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.  Touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and My daughters.’

‘PHYSICIANS OF NO VALUE’

’When Ephralm saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb:  but he is not able to heal you, neither shall he cure you of your wound.’—­HOSEA v. 13 (R.V.).

The long tragedy which ended in the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by Assyrian invasion was already beginning to develop in Hosea’s time.  The mistaken politics of the kings of Israel led them to seek an ally where they should have dreaded an enemy.  As Hosea puts it in figurative fashion, Ephraim’s discovery of his ‘sickness’ sent him in the vain quest for help to the apparent source of the ‘sickness,’ that is to Assyria, whose king in the text is described by a name which is not his real name, but is a significant epithet, as the margin puts it, ’a king that should contend’; and who, of course, was not able to heal nor to cure the wounds which he had inflicted.  Ephraim’s