NOTEBOOK

calves, set one up in Dan, the other in Bethel. Here he
built a magnificent temple after an Egyptian model, in-
tending to rival the one at Jerusalem. Such was the idola-
trous worship that the name was changed to Bethavan,
House of Idols.

It was at one of these idolatrous festivals that Jero-
boam attempted to lay hold of the prophet of God who
rebuked his abominable worship, and his arm was para-
lyzed and withered. These iniquities drew down the wrath
of God upon the place, and 2500 years ago the prophet
Amos was inspired to say: "Seek not Bethel, nor enter
into Gilgal, for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity and
Bethel shall come to naught."

Look upon these heaps of ruins, these broken cisterns,
these neglected valleys—has the prophecy been fulfilled?
Whose handwriting is here?

And with the same propriety you might point to the
site of any city of that day and say the very same—only
Jerusalem and Damascus have survived—and even the
Jerusalem and Damascus of that day are desolate enough,
for they lie 30 ft. under the ground! All the other cities
are gone! There is a good deal of humbug about proving
prophecies by this sort of evidence.

It is easy to prove a prophecy that promised destruc-
tion to a city—and it is impossible to prove one that prom-
ised anything else—more particularly life and prosperity.
It seems to me that the prophets fooled away their time
when they prophesied the destruction of the cities—old
Time would have fixed that, easy enough. Solomon's Tem-
ple was not to have one stone resting upon another, but
infatuated travelers of the present day are determined to
believe in spite of prophets, Holy Writ and everything
else, that they have found the foundations of Solomon's
doomed temple! Possibly they can reconcile this with the
prophecy by saying it is only the ground there they have
found.

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