=Wrong ideas of God.=—­On the other hand, these sacrifices, when misunderstood, tended to give people a wrong idea of God as one who was greedy for food and gifts.  There was the greater danger of this wrong idea because of the character of the priests who were supposed to represent Jehovah.  Many of them were very greedy indeed.  The story of Eli’s sons in 1 Samuel 2. 12-17 is an illustration.  The priests were supposed to receive for their own personal support a part of all the gifts which were brought to the shrine.  But the sons of Eli made it the rule that whatever came out of the meat kettle on a three-pronged fork stuck in by the priest should belong to him.  Very 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 wells of tenderness in Hosea’s loving heart were hers, and she became his wife.  For a time they were happy; then little by little it became clear that this woman, Gomer, did not really love him as he loved her.  She only wanted his money.  And when she could get nothing more from him, or could get more elsewhere, she left him.  She was like the woman in Kipling’s poem, “The Vampire,” “she did not care.”  It hurt Hosea.  For a time the light of the whole world seemed darkened for him.