But whatever the immediate result, fidelity and industry are called for from us all.  Our Lord Himself said, “It is My meat and My drink to do the will of My Father in heaven,” and this He felt to be as true of His work at the carpenter’s bench as in the precincts of the Temple.  Whether in the business, or in the household, or in the Church, the King is ever watching His servants, and of His grace will raise every faithful one to higher service and larger possibilities. “The Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly,” and His reward will come not only in loftier position but in ennobled character—­

  “Toil is no thorny crown of pain,
    Bound round man’s brow for sin;
  True souls from it all strength may gain,
    High manliness may win.

  “O God, who workest hitherto,
    Working in all we see,
  Fain would we be, and hear, and do,
    As best it pleaseth Thee.”

II.

Jeroboam’s defects in character, and indeed his actual sins, were many and great.

1.  His ingratitude to his benefactor was a disgrace to him.

He fostered and used, as far as he dared, the discontent which smouldered in the tribe of Ephraim, as the result partly of jealousy of Judah, and partly of restiveness under extravagant expenditure and increasing taxation, and this treachery went on until he was expelled the country by Solomon, and driven out as an exile into Egypt, where, however, he still carried out his ambitious schemes, till his chance came under Rehoboam.

Many a man kicks away the ladder by which he rose to fortune.  He likes to divest himself of the past wherein he needed help, for it was a time of humiliation, and by cutting off association with former friends, would fain lead people to believe that his success was entirely due to his own cleverness.  Even his own parents are sometimes neglected and ignored, and these, to whom he owed his life, who cared for him in his helpless 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