It made Moses and Joshua once more living and vitally present among them. It re-asserted the national idea and once more published the covenant of God with Abraham, and renewed the experiences of their fathers before Mount Sinai. Josiah summoned the Elders. He read from the Law before a vast multitude in the Temple courts, standing on a high platform, with the prophets and priests, the Elders and the great men of Judah about him. He quickly decided on his policy. The pagan worship was uprooted, every instrument or image of wood was burnt, those of metal or stone were shattered to pieces or ground to powder; the ashes were carried beyond the boundaries of Judah, or thrown into the graves along the Kedron valley. The houses and shrines of those who celebrated the licentious rites near the Temple were destroyed." The wooden chariots consecrated to the Sun, the brazen altars planted by Ahaz and Manasseh in different parts of the Temple disappeared. Everywhere, as by a kind of exorcism, the king desecrated the sanctuaries of the High Places, especially those in the valley of Hinnom and on Mount Olivet, by heaping upon them the bones of the dead. The historian gives us a vivid picture of these sweeping reforms (II Kings 23: 4-14).

1. The Darker Strain of Religious Persecution. We do not commonly think of Josiah as a religious persecutor. The familiar picture of him is that of a young lad of eight years standing before the High Priest to receive the royal crown. But this was only the beginning. Now a young man, with all the fervor and passion of youth, there comes before us another sort of picture. It is as in the case of Manasseh, his grandfather, another instance of surprising inheritance. If it be true, the tradition that the

mother of Manasseh was the daughter of Isaiah, then in this later descendant of the great Prophet we have coming out into fierce and ruthless zeal that faith, that burning patriotism which glowed within the prophet's heart and made him supreme among his fellow preachers. "This persecution under Josiah was the first direct persecution that the Kingdom of Judah had witnessed on behalf of the true Religion." Down to that time Manasseh alone had resorted to this method in the interests of what he called religion. But no doubt this very policy of Manasseh was in large measure responsible for the violence of Josiah. The times were characterized by an unbridled passion and men resorted to harsh and cruel measures of compulsion because these were in harmony with the temper of the age. So it was in England under Edward VI. and Bloody Mary; in Geneva under Protestant Calvin; again and again in the history of the Roman Church in her persecutions of Protestants. So it was in New England when the warrior Puritans put to death those whom they charged with witchcraft; so it is even now, whenever we let the narrowness and severity of our own judgments condemn without mercy those who differ from ourselves in matters of opinion.

2. The Results of the Reformation. Josiah failed to secure any deep and permanent reform. He was pious and faithful beyond question. But it may be questioned if ever a compulsory method of reform is permanent. He reformed the letter of the Law; but there was behind all the heavy, besotted heart of Israel, that which could not respond. Force a child to pray and he will hate both you and the prayer. The essence of all leadership is inspiration, and the source of all real reform and progress lies at last within

the man himself, and within the boy's own heart. Yet Josiah did a great work. The inspiration of his career and character was more powerful in subsequent times than in his own. “There was no king before him that turned to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul, and with all his might according to the Law of Moses, neither after him shall be one like him." He was "the supreme hero of absolute obedience to the letter of the Law, the most perfect type of the theocratic, carrying out the requirements of the ancient Sacred Books to absolute fulfilment" (Geikie), alike in the extirpation of idolatry and superstition, and the legal execution of their ritual. "In evil times he dared to be good," as was said of Nerva, the Roman emperor. The outcome of his reformation was not all that could be desired. The evils of idolatry and superstition had eaten into the very heart of the people. Further, the sense of national vitality, that self-confidence which is the secret of powerful struggle and hope, had been weakened beyond recovery. The little Jewish nation, already torn asunder, enfeebled by generations of false religious practices that had sapped not only their faith, but the purity of their moral life, lamed and bruised by ceaseless and fruitless wars, with vast multitudes borne away into hopeless captivity for this nation there seemed no real power of recovery. Josiah's reign lasted but thirteen years after the great Reformation, too short a period to enable him to complete the great task of national recovery, even if such a thing were now possible. For a people so beset and harried on every side by powerful ambitious empires, there seemed no chance of escape from utter destruction. His reign with all its brave unconquerable spirit came to an end. "Josiah was the last royal hero of Israel. With his death the his

tory of the Jewish monarchy might end, were it not for one great event and one great person that still remained, the Fall of Jerusalem and the Prophet Jeremiah."STANLEY.

The Fall of the Southern Kingdom

Lesson Passage: II Kings 25:1-30.

I. Jeremiah. The disappointing results of Josiah's reformation have been noted in the former chapter. Only twenty-three years intervened between his death and the Fall of Jerusalem. During this period no less than four kings sat on the throne. Mention has been made of the two main parties that faced each other in Jewish history; the Pagan Party and the Jehovistic Party. These represented the dominant forces, and between these four centuries there waged "an irrepressible conflict," just as in American History the same "irrepressible conflict" waged between the forces of slavery and freedom; just as in the history of Christianity between the Papacy and Religious Liberty. Josiah's Reformation had not reformed. The Pagan Party was led by the nobles and those priests and prophets who sympathized with them, men who, while professing faith in Jehovah, were actuated by political purposes and still more strongly by religious hatred of the stricter and sterner followers of Jehovah. It was to this inner circle of pure, uncompromising patriots and believers that Jeremiah belonged. His constant companion was Baruch, the grandson of Maaseiah, Governor of Jerusalem under Josiah, with Ahikam the son, and Gedaliah, the grandson, of Shaphan, the Secretary under Josiah, who had discovered the Book of the Law and been a powerful leader in the reformation. "Born in the priestly city of Anathoth, with the influence of these families round him,