the God of Judah-the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—is our God, and we are His children by adoption and grace. After the departure of the Assyrians, peace again reigned throughout Judah, and remained unbroken till the death of her good king. According to the word of the Lord, Hezekiah lived fifteen years after his sickness. He died in the prime of life, to the great grief of his subjects, having reigned over Judah twenty-nine years: And they buried him in the chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David, and all Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death." 'The memory of the just is blessed.'2

1 2 Kings, xxii. 33.

2 Prov. x. 7.

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CHAPTER II.

EZEKIAH was succeeded by his son Manasseh, a mere boy, being but twelve years of age when he ascended the throne. Up to the period of his sad, sad loss, we may feel certain that the young prince, the child of many prayers, the earnestly longed for heir,

was trained in the ways of godliness by carefully selected tutors and governors. His father delighted in wisdom and goodness; his mother, as her name Hephzibah denotes, was the delight of her husband from which we may infer that she also was a true servant of God, and worthy of him who chose her as his queen. But all in vain, for a time at least, proved the pious care of his parents. The youthful king at once fell into the hands of evil counsellors, and alas ! gave himself up willingly to their guidance. With Hezekiah's departed spirit seem to have flown all the graces that should have descended to his son; and Manasseh abandoned himself to wickedness, beyond all the wickedness practised by his wretched grandfather Ahaz. A very fiend he was in impiety

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chiefly in the most intense hatred to the religion of his father, and he worked with untiring zeal to exterminate the worship of Jehovah, and introduce in its stead heathenism in its vilest form. He converted the holy temple into a house for all manner of idolatrous profanation, setting up in the sanctuary an image dedicated to the host of heaven, and erecting in the sacred courts altars for his false deities. Very soon Jerusalem became the scene of abominations, which must have horrified even her heathen neighbours, for the impious Manasseh, not content with insulting his God, practised witchcrafts ' and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards,'1 and even sacrificed his son to Moloch. Nothing seems to have been too outrageous for him to commit; and his unfortunate subjects were forced to conform to his will, being seduced by him to do more evil than did the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the children of Israel.'2 when God sent His prophets to Manasseh to reason with him and exhort him to repent, he treated them with contempt and outrage, causing many of them to be put to death. Not only the prophets, but numbers of others also became martyrs during this reign of terror, for we read that 'Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another,' that is to say, that the city literally ran with the blood of the tyrant's victims. At length

And

the anger of the Lord broke forth in denunciations against the wretched nation. He declared that He would bring such evil upon Jerusalem that the ears of all who heard it would tingle. At once the curse began to work; Assyria again became a rod in the hands of the Almighty to chastise His rebellious children. Esar-haddon, who it appears from his monuments was one of the greatest monarchs Assyria ever produced, having subdued among other powers Babylon, chose that city as his seat of government, and from thence sent an army against Judah. Manasseh met the Assyrian general, gave him battle and was defeated. He attempted to effect his escape, but was taken in a thicket where he had hoped to conceal himself, and was carried bound in fetters of iron to Babylon. Then began the working of the curse pronounced against the descendants of Hezekiah.

It will not be out of place here to speak of two of the officers who were sent by Hezekiah to meet Rab-shakeh, and receive from him the blasphemous message of Sennacherib, we mean Eliakim and Shebna. That the reformation produced by Hezekiah was in a great measure superficial is evident from the fact, that as soon as the good king was dead so many were willing to sink again into the degradation of heathenism. Had this not been the case the nation would have risen against the impious tyrant Manasseh, and, hurling him from

it. Many faithful ones there were who bewailed the state of affairs, but, alas! they were in the minority, and thus for upwards of twenty years blasphemy and tyranny reigned triumphant.

Among those who had been secretly disaffected. towards Hezekiah's reformation was Shebna the scribe. Whether or not Shebna continued to deceive Hezekiah till that monarch's death, and retain his position as the king's secretary, we do not know; but from a passage in Isaiah we infer that in the abandoned court of Manasseh, he held a still more confidential office than he had done in the previous reign, no other than that of steward of the king's household. The faithful Eliakim was, it is presumed, removed to make room for the wicked Shebna. We turn to the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah, and read there a prophecy delivered sixteen years before the death of Hezekiah, in which the sad fate of Shebna and the exaltation of Eliakim are clearly foretold. The wrath of Jehovah against the once hypocritical and afterwards blasphemous Shebna, and His loving favour towards His faithful servant Eliakim, are shown in words so powerful, that none can read them unmoved: 'Thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, Go, get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house and say, What hast thou here, and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on