eized Micah's priest. 'And they said unto him,
Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to
us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be priest unto the
house of one man, or to be priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?
And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the
teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people.'

"Of course, Micah didn't like it, and called out, 'Ye have taken away my
gods which I made, and the priest, and are gone away, and what have I
more?' The Danites answered after the manner of the strong, 'Let not thy
voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall upon you, and thou lose
thy life, with the lives of thy household. And the children of Dan went
their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he
turned and went back unto his house.'

"Is not that the way of the world? The strong get what they want and the
weak have to make the best of it. Micah, when he turned back from a
hopeless conflict, was a philosopher, and the young Levite when he went
forward was a pietist. Both the philosophy and the piety were
by-products of the activity of the children of Dan. They sadly needed
the priest to sanctify the deeds of the morrow when 'they took that
which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish,
unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the
sword; and they burnt the city with fire. And there was no deliverer,
because it was far from Zidoh, and they had no dealings with any man;
and it was in the valley that lieth by Beth-rehob.'

"The wild doings in the little valley that lieth by Beth-rehob have been
repeated endlessly. Whittier describes the traditional alliance between
Religion and sanguinary Power:--

Feet red from war fields trod the church aisles holy,
With trembling reverence, and the oppressor there
Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,
Crushed human hearts beneath the knee of prayer.

"When we inquire too curiously about the origin of the things which we
hold most precious, we come to suspect that we are little better than
the receivers of stolen goods. How could it be otherwise with the
descendants of a long line of freebooters? How are we to uphold the
family fortunes if we forsake the means by which they were obtained? Are
we not fated by our very constitutions to continue a predatory life?"

There are lovers of peace