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THE JUDGMENT OF THE CHURCH.

whom all their prophets had spoken, the King who was sitting on the holy hill of Zion. Why were they not able to hear Him? Was it not because He was the Son of Man? because He came with a message to Man, and they, shut up in their pride and exclusiveness, did not like to take up their position among men, did not care for a voice which was addressed to men? The people of Nineveh therefore repented at the preaching of Jonah; the people of Jerusalem did not repent at the preaching of Jesus. The Jew, because he was inhuman, was necessarily ungodly. He would not acknowledge the Son of Man; practically he could not believe in Jehovah. And so the city, that holy city, would become the bloody city; in it would be fulfilled the law which had been fulfilled in the Assyrian Capital. Awful and everlasting witness of the divine order; which asserted itself without respect of persons then, which will assert itself without respect of persons always! The Christian Church, the Church of the human race, has been almost as slow to maintain its true privilege of preaching the glad tidings of Love and Truth to the human race as the Jewish nation its forerunner was. Christian prophets have shrunk from their commission, fled from the face of the Lord, been angry that God was more gracious than they were, mourned over their perishing gourds, have distrusted Him who cares for the men and the women and the cattle in every country under heaven. But the Church must publish God's righteousness and God's grace to men, let its members be ever so unwilling. If the tongues of prophets are silent, if divine feasts and worship cease, then by its own captivity it will be taught itself, it will teach mankind, who is its King, its Judge, its Saviour.

SERMON XXI.

MANASSEH AND JOSIAH; ZEPHANIAH AND HABAKKUK.

(Lincoln's Inn, 3rd Sunday after Easter.-May 2, 1852.)

HABAKKUK II. 4.

Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

THERE is a tradition that Isaiah survived Hezekiah and suffered death in the days of Manasseh. Even the manner of his death has been determined; it has been said that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to him when he speaks of some having been sawn asunder. A vague rumour of this kind cannot be of the least help in determining the application of a prophecy, and there are no words in the book of Isaiah which warrant us in extending any part of it beyond the time denoted by the opening verse. belief that he became a martyr arose from the improbability that any righteous man could be suffered to live in the days of Manasseh.

The

These days are described to us as darker than any which had preceded them in the kingdom of Judah. "The king did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, after the

362

THE YEARS AFTER HEZEKIAH.

[SERM.

abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. For he built up again the highplaces which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards

Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."-(2 Kings xxi. 2-16.)

This state of things must have lasted a long time. He was but twelve years old when he began to reign, so that the violent change may not have begun at once, though it is quite possible that some of the counsellors, who had brought vain oblations and been very active on the new moons and Sabbaths during the reign of the father, may have cultivated all the superstitions and idolatrous tendencies that were ripening in the mind of the son, and may have encouraged him to set up groves and high-places even during his minority. However as he reigned fifty-and-five years, this supposition is hardly necessary to account for the extent and completeness of the reaction. Nor will any attentive reader of Isaiah and Micah feel astonished by it. They, especially the last, enable us to see the seeds of all corruption in a period of health. The lying prophet, the drunken priest, may have been hidden, even may have been externally reformed, in the later golden years of Hezekiah; but the soil, out of which they had grown and which had cherished them, was sure to produce the like weeds afterwards whenever the diligent culture was withdrawn

XXI.]

MANASSEH A CAPTIVE.

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from it, even if their growth was not fostered and quickened by the hands which should have extirpated them.

We do not hear of any special prophet at this time. Probably there was no one then whose visions were committed to writing, no one perhaps whose visions extended beyond the immediate evil and its coming punishment. Mere simple denunciations such as we heard of among the early seers of Israel, may have supplied the place of the winding discourse and the song that rose from the depths of earth to the heights of Heaven. This we should infer from the words in the Book of Kings; "The Lord spake by His servants the prophets, saying, Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols: therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Behold I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and spoil to all their enemies; because they have done that which was evil in my sight; and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even unto this day."-(2 Kings, xxi. 10—15.)

The immediate accomplishment of this prediction is thus recorded in the 2nd Book of Chronicles, xxxiii. 2: "Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon."

364

HIS BABYLONIAN EXPERIENCE.

[SERM. Babylon which had revolted from the Assyrian empire had again become a portion of it. That empire was exhibiting in its latter days all its ancient character. But its former capital was beginning to be threatened by the Medes. Babylon, the old glory of the Chaldees, soon to become the centre of a new Chaldæan empire, having recovered from the effects of its siege, was probably the centre of Asiatic religion and civilization. Manasseh would find himself surrounded there by the gods of whom he had set up images in Jerusalem; he would see that in its perfection which he had tried to imitate on a poor and insignificant scale. And he would be under the rod with which he had wished to scourge his subjects. This was the kind of lesson which all the prophets had prepared their kings for. They had dallied with idolatry; there was something in it especially attractive, it seemed so much more passionate, devout, sympathetic than that worship which the law of their fathers had prescribed. Their taste would be gratified. They should experience this worship in the length and depth and breadth of it. They had dallied with tyranny; what old decrees and statutes had power to bind them, the rulers of the land? what obligations had they to their serfs and bondsmen? No remedy can be effectual for such thoughts, but that which is said to have been tried upon the Sicilian masters in the days of Timoleon, the becoming serfs and bondsmen themselves. In this case we are told it was effectual. Manasseh humbled himself, turned to the Lord God of Israel, was brought back to Jerusalem another man. Probably he was able to effect a very partial cure of the evils which he had caused and of the confusion from which the land must have been suffering during his captivity. The short reign of his son is represented as not less