infancy and wayward youth, are left unhelped. "_Cursed is the man who
setteth light by his father or mother_."

But though we naturally cry "shame" upon such an one, it is possible that
we ourselves are acting an unfilial part towards our Heavenly Father.
And the more He prospers us the greater is the danger of our forgetting
Him, who crowns us with loving-kindness and tender mercies.

2. Jeroboam's sin against Solomon was as nothing compared with his sin
against God.

From the first he seems to have been an irreligious man. He regarded
religion as a kind of restraint on the lower orders, and therefore useful
in government. Priests and prophets constituted, in his opinion, the
vanguard of the police, and they should, therefore, be supported and
encouraged by the State. As to the form religion assumed, he was not
particular. In Egypt he had become accustomed to the ritual of Apis and
Mnevis, which was by no means so gross and demoralising as the idolatry
of the Canaanites, and he evidently could not see why the worship of
Jehovah could not be carried on by those who believed in Him through the
use of emblems, and, if need be, of idols. Therefore he set about the
establishment of the cult of Apis, and "_made two calves of gold, and set
the one in Bethel and the other put he in Dan_." This was the sin for
which he was condemned again and again with almost wearisome iteration.
He was by no means a fanatical idolater, and this act of his was simply
the dictate of his worldly policy. He was engaged in the establishment
of the separate kingdom of Israel, which for many a long year was to
exist side by side with the kingdom of Judah. But this policy of
separation would be impossible so long as there was the old spirit of
unity in the nation. And this unity was expressed and fostered most of