none of these the office of reading the law on this occasion. As his predecessors had caused the people to stray after idols, it was meet that he should lead them back to the true God. Elevated, perhaps, on the brazen platform where Solomon stood when he offered the prayer at the dedication of the temple, Josiah himself read in the hearing of the listening thousands, "all the words of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord." His royal dignity, his intense earnestness, the reverence with which such a monarch must have been regarded by his subjects, the expectant attitude of the people's minds, all made this republication of the law a scene of surpassing impressiveness and sublimity. No "blackness and darkness and tempest" mantled over the temple; no unseen trumpet sent forth notes loud and long to break the awful stillness; but there was many a quaking heart in that vast assembly, as the burning wrath of Jehovah against the worshippers of idol-gods gleamed forth from the fearful scroll.

When the reading of the law was finished, "the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord, to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and with all his soul to perform the words of the covenant" which were written in the book. Then he caused all the people present to enter into the same covenant. We cannot doubt, from the previ

ous and subsequent life of Josiah, that he made these engagements sincerely and with deep solemnity. But from the state of the nation as pictured by Jeremiah, there can be as little doubt that many of the people were neither sincere nor serious in this transaction. Some were carried away by sympathy. The scene, the truths they had heard, the anxious words and looks of others, excited a temporary feeling which they regarded as a transfer of their affections from idols to the covenant God of the nation. Some confounded approbation of the service of Jehovah with a fixed determination to serve him. As they listened to the words of the law, both reason and conscience responded to the excellence and obligation of this service; but when idolatry allured them with its sensual worship, reason and conscience were overcome in the struggle with appetite and passion. Some, of a more intellectual cast, mistook the mental excitement caused by new and grand truths, for the joy which springs from love to the character and law of Jehovah. Some saw that the established religion was becoming the road to office and honor, and did not hesitate by hypocrisy to make gain of godliness. While not a few, through dread of singularity, took on themselves the solemn engagements of a covenant which they neither expected nor intended to fulfil. And all this is but a counterpart of what in every age is sometimes

witnessed, where the Spirit of God works great and sudden religious changes in a community. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

Josiah now proceeded to a thorough removal from Judah of the remains of idolatry. Some, however, think what follows the repair of the temple, in the book of Kings, actually took place previously, in the order of the narrative in Chronicles. He commanded that all the vessels in the temple made for idolatrous uses, should be brought forth and burned. The ashes he afterwards carried to Bethel. He put out of office the priests who had burned incense to Jehovah on the high places, and them that had served at the altars of heathen gods. The former he suffered to retain some of the privileges of the priesthood; but though he brought them out of the cities, that they might not again corrupt the people, he did not allow them to serve at the altar in Jerusalem. He took away the horses devoted to the sun by the kings of Judah, and burned the chariots in the fire. He beat down the idolaltars which had been erected in the courts of the Lord's house, and cast their ashes into the brook Kedron.

Josiah next carried the reformation into the land of Israel, which it is supposed had been placed under his government by the king of Assyria. He broke down the altar which Jeroboam had erected

at Bethel, burned the high place, and stamped it to small powder. He took bones out of some sepulchres in the neighborhood, burned them on the altar, and slew all the priests of the high places; thus fulfilling a remarkable prediction uttered more than three centuries before his birth. About a year after Jeroboam set up the altar at Bethel, the Lord sent a prophet out of Judah to predict that a child by the name of Josiah, to be born of the family of David, would offer on it the priests of the high places, and burn men's bones upon it. No king of Judah had called his child by that name, or assumed it himself, until the godless Amon, ignorant of the prediction, had named his son and successor Josiah.

What God has predicted, be it promise or threatening, blessing or curse, distant or near, God will fulfil.

Josiah did not relax in his work until he had removed every vestige of idolatry from the countries pertaining "to the children of Israel," and made all that dwelt in them "to serve the Lord. their God."

CHAPTER XIX

JOSIAH'S SUBSEQUENT HISTORY.

THE main design of the gatherings at the three great feasts in Jerusalem, was the unity of the nation in the love and service of Jehovah. It was this which made these occasions so precious to all who delighted in his law and worship But there were minor advantages of a social and political kind. The feasts were made seasons not only of sacrifice and praise to God, but of social festivity. They promoted kindness and love among families and portions of the same tribe, as well as among the different tribes; and thus tended to unite in one body, with one head, members of different local governments. The jarrings and alienations which arise in families and neighborhoods, with many a feud among the tribes that otherwise had ripened into bloody strife, would be forgotten amid the solemnities and festivities of the holy city.

Having put down idolatry throughout the land, and repaired the temple, a prince so pious as Josiah, and so observant of all the requirements of the law, would not overlook or neglect the appointed feasts. Accordingly, he ordered a passover to be kept unto the Lord at Jerusalem. Not so much, probably, from the number of the people present, as from