A Dark Day and a Bright Sunset

How fair has the day been, how bright was the sun, How lovely and joyful the course that he run! Though he rose in a mist, when his race he begun.

And there follow ‘d some droppings of rain:
But now as the traveller comes to the west,
His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best, — He paints the sky gay as he sinks to his rest,

And foretells a bright rising again.

“And such the believer! his course he begins, Like the sym in a mist, when he mourns for his sins. And melts into tears; then he breaks out and shines.

And travels his heavenly way:
But when he conies nearer to finish his race,
Like a bright setting sun, he looks richer in grace,
And gives a sure hope, at the end of his days,
Of rising in brighter array.”

—Isaac Watts.

“Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his sin that ho sinned, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah? And Manasseh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza; and Amou hid eon reigned in his stead.” — 2 Kii^GS xxi. 17, 18.

2 CuRON. xxxiii. 1-21,

Here is an unostentatious, an unhonoured, an unepitaphed grave! Though one of the kings of Judah, Manasseh is laid, not in pomp and splendour, amid the dust of his ancestors, but in a private tomb, in the garden of his Jerusalem palace.

Striking is the contrast between these obsequies of Manasseh and those of his royal father Hezekiah. The funeral cortege and burial of the latter was one of unprecedented splendour. “They buried him,” we read, “in the chief est of the sepulchres of the sons of David: and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death.”* But however brief be the chronicle of Manasseh’s departure and funeral, however lowly or unregal the mausoleum or cenotaph reared over his ashes, he is himself a wondrous “monument,” — a monument of Divine grace and mercy and forgiveness. As we gather around his tomb, let us ponder the spiritual epitaph for ourselves, which many have read through tears of guilt and despair, thanking God and taking courage, — “The chief of sinners, but / obtained mercy I”

We have to trace, in his case, as described in the mottolines of the Christian poet, a “sunrise” of promise, soon obscured with clouds of guilt and crime. These clouds burst in floods of penitence and sorrow. A meridian of sudden brilliancy succeeds. The sky clears, and the orb of

1 Chron. xxxii. 33.

a chequered life sets cloudless and serene on the hills of Judah. Standing by his grave, under the shadow of Zion, let us take a retrospective view of his strange history. He is the yrodigal son of Old Testament story. We have the departure from the hallowed parental home; the life of alienation, misery, and sin, and his final restoration and return. In other words, let us consider, in their order, these three points — Manasseh’s sin; his conversion; and his new life.

I. His career of sin was a peculiarly sad one; and all the more so, when we reflect that his infancy and boyhood were nurtured under the training of the best and holiest of fathers. Hezekiah, when he received the respite from sickness and expected death, was divinely apprised that fifteen additional years would be added to his life; and it was three years subsequent to this, that Manasseh was born. With the precise knowledge which the good king of Judah thus possessed as to the assigned limit of existence, (a knowledge vouchsafed indeed to none else,) and knowing, moreover, how susceptible youth is of lasting impressions, we may well imagine, as year by year drew nigh when the crown would devolve on the head of his young boy, how faithfully he would employ the brief allotted period in training him for his great duties; infefting him in that noblest of inheritances, a father’s piety and devout example. How zealously would he echo the dying exhortation and benediction of his great progenitor, ‘’And thou, my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him luith a perfect heart, and witJt a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will he found of thee; hut if thou forsake him, he luill cast thee off for ever.” * Above all, how would Hezekiah (man of special prayer as he was) baptize that child’s infancy and youth with these burning devotions, — these earnest petitions, which, mightier than all his armies, had laid the proud chivalry of Sennacherib low in the dust.

But ah! we are too truthfully, too painfully reminded, in the case of Manasseh, that grace is not hereditary; that piety, despite of the most devout and religious training, is not always transmitted from sire to son. To take an older illustration; Adam, with all the recollections fresh on his memory of Eden lost, the galling bittei’ness of forfeited bliss, would doubtless oft and again rehearse in the ears of his children the dark story of transgression. He would paint to them, as he alone of all the human race could do, the unsullied beauties of holiness, in order to scare them from that accursed thing which had entailed upon himself so terrible a ruin! Yet what was his success? What effect had these blinding tears of penitence and remorse, shed before his children at the very gates of the lost paradise? His own first-born, despite of all, turned out a murderer and a vagabond. And here, in a later age, we have another child of prayers and tears, scarce mounting the throne still fragrant with parental piety, ere he insults a parent’s ashes, tramples on his counsels, mocks his tears, and becjomes a desperado in guilt. Altars to Baalim and Ashtaroth were erected within the Temple’s sacred enclosures. The groves in the valley of Jehoshaphat and on the slopes of the Mount

* 1 Chron. xxviii. 9.

of Olives were polluted with defiled altars, on which incense rose to the host of heaven. Deep down in the valley of Hinnorn, behind his palace, ho caused his own son to pass through the fire, dedicating him a votary to bloodthirsty Moloch. With servile credulity, while he rejected the God of his fathers, he listened to lying oracles, and did homage to those who pretended intercourse with familiar spirits. Proud, passionate, overbearing, he became the persecutor and fanatic of his day. He poured out the blood of Jerusalem like water. Innocent lives were sacrificed. Those who loved the God and the religion of their fathers better than existence, were given over to massacre. Cruelty and torture were added to death; and tradition has it, that good old Isaiah was, at the savage command of the royal master whom he had too faithfully reproved, ordered to be “sawn asunder.” ‘* He wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.” *

Nor was his guilt and ruin tjonfined to himself. There is a terrible contagion in moral evil. We read that “He made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to sin, and to do worse than the heathen whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.” f This tells the baneful influence his creed and example had on his subjects; — that he sowed broadcast the seeds of his own wickedness among the thousands that owned his sway.

It is an awful and solemn thought, continually recurring to us in these Bible characters, that individual influence assumes greater and more responsible proportions according to position or scale in society. The influence of

* 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6. -f- 2 Chron. v. 9.

mind upon mind, and especially of those in exalted position, is truly gigantic, — the magnetic power of moral attraction or repulsion. It is often said that “the age makes the man.” “We believe that the converse is oftener true, that “the man makes the age.” At the close of last century, in France and England, there was, in high places, a galaxy of great and commanding intellect. In France, the infidelity of a few, gave the first impulse to that wild wave of moral ruin which is chafing and eddying there to this day. Simultaneously in England, a number of influential minds appeared in prominent positions. They cast their talents and influence as trophies at the foot of the cross. But while they themselves are gone; — long slumbering beneath the storied urns which a nation delighted to rear over their honoured ashes, — the seed wafted from these Trees of righteousness is this day springing up, in a forest of holy influences, to the praise and the glory of God.

So it wa-s with Hezekiah and Manasseh. In the case of the former, how marvellous the influence for good. How his own faith and piety were reflected in the hearts of his people. Look at that memorable instance to which we have already incidentally referred, when Sennacherib and his giant host came up against Jerusalem and the fenced cities of Judah. It was enough to strike panic and dismay into the boldest and bravest. But Hezekiah, undismayed, because he knew where his true strength lay, gathered together his soldiers and captains of war in the open street, and thus addressed them: — ‘’Be strong and courageous; he not afraid nor dismay edj for the king of Assyria, nor for all the midtitude that is tcith him: for there he more luith us than with him.

With him is an arm of flesh: but with us is the Lord our Qod, to help us, and to fight our battles. And,” it is added, “the people eested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah.” *

See, on the other hand, in the case of Manasseh, the influence for evil; and that, too, long after he had mourned his sins, with breaking heart, and sought repentance carefully and with tears. Ay, it was an influence that survived his death, and bore bitter fruit after he himself was laid in his grave, when his own son perpetuated the idolatries of his father’s earlier years; for we read, “Amon, his son, sacrificed unto all the carved images which Manasseh his fatlcer had made, and served them.”

Let us never forget, each of us, our solemn individual influence; an influence, too, not confined to place or time, but made up of words and deeds that transmit their endless echoes and images from age to age; — giving us very life when we are dead — putting speech into our ashes. After the stone is sunk in the quiet lake, and lying still in the bottom, the waves generated by it, are being propelled in concentric circlets to the shore. They are chafing and rippling on the pebbles, when the disturbing cause has been for many minutes lost to sight, and buried in unconscious rest in the underlying bed of sand or mud. When we are sunk in our last long rest, lost from the sight and from the land of the living, — “gone down into silence,” — the ripple of influence, for good or for evil, will be heard murmuring on the shores of Time!

Note again, as an aggravation of Manasseh’s sin, his repeated and obdurate rejection of Divine warning.” The

* 2 Chron. xxxii. 7, 8.

Tiord spake to Manasseh and his people, hut they luoidd not hearken.”*

He may have spoken to him as He does to us, in varied ways. He may have spoken to him by blessings. He may have sent His holy prophets and seers to expostulate with him. He may have knocked at the door of his seared conscience by the hallowed remembrances of a parent’s piety, and a youth of rare spiritual privilege. But it was all in vain. And now He prepares the rod for severer punishment. He makes ready the bow, and puts the arrow on the string, to send the dart of deeper conviction home to his heart! Let us here admire God’s patience and forbearance with this guilty, daring, aggravated apostate. He might have cut him down in a moment; — He might have commissioned the lightning from heaven, or the pangs of some sudden disease, or the hand of righteous violence, to rid the nation of a villain. He might have sent him out, like Ahab, in his chariot to battle; and some bowman might have drawn his arrow at a venture, and sent him reeling to a grave of despair! But, no. IManasseh’s name is in the Book of Life. He is one of God’s chosen ones from before the foundation of the world; that lost sheep must be brought home to the fold — that lost son must be brought to the paternal halls. “0 Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, hut m me is thy help found.” “f

And how does God deal with this self-destroyer? What are the means He employs to humble his hard heart, and evoke from the wretched prodigal the cry,” I luill arise, and go to my Father!’ He sends one of the generals of Esar-

* 2 Chron. xxsiii. 10. f Hosea xiii. 9.

iiaddon, the king of Assyria, against him and his fenced cities. The panic-stricken monarch presents a painful and humiliating contrast with the brave, bold heart of Hezekiah. The latter, when the same hosts Vvere encamped against him at his very gates, led his men up the temple steps, singing, as they marched, his own sublime psalm, written for the occasion, — “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble: therefore will not we fear, though the earth he removed, and though the mountains he carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and he troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof” * His son, without, perhaps, the shadow of resistance, flees humiliated from his palace, and takes shelter in a brake or copse of thorns to elude the fury of the invader. But the commissioners of the Divine vengeance track out his guilty footsteps. He is loaded with chains, marched in ignominy to Babylon, and consigned there to a dungeon-vault. What a comment on the striking parallel made by the wise man — “The luicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are hold as a lion!” •(•

11. Let us consider next, Manasseh’s conversion; — the ffreat turning point in his history. That dungeon became to him as the gate of heaven. His God, in a far higher than natural sense, ‘’brought him out of darkness and the shadow of death. He broke the gates of b?^ass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder.” I

We are called to note here the power of sanctified affliction.

* Ps. xlvi. 1-3. t Prov. xxviii. 1. J Ps. cvii. 14-16.

There is a twofold effect of trial and adversity. Sometimes it hardens the heart, leading a rebellious spirit to murmur and repine under the hand that chastens, and to say, like Gideon, ‘’ If the Lord he with us, why has all this befallen usV or to utter the worse infidel scoff, “Let me curse God, and die!’ But it has another effect, — the more blessed one, of humbling the rebellious spirit, bringing it to consider its ways, bewail its sins, and, instead of kicking against the pricks, to cry, “Lo?’d, what woiddst thou have me to do?”

It was so wdth Manasseh. In that dungeon, God knocked at the door of his obdurate heart. The prison in Babylon became his spiritual birthplace. ‘’Behold, he prayeth!” Knees that never bent before the God of his fathers, since he knelt a child by his parents’ side, are now bent on that dungeon floor!

We can imagine his exercise of souL How, in that solemn, silent prison, the memory of years on years of past sin would rise up before him. His father’s prayers and saintly counsels; — the innocent blood he shed in Jerusalem; — the terrible desecration of the holy place; — the thousands he had involved, by his guilty example, in apostasy and ruin! Oh, as the rush of the past came on his lonely spirit, in the midnight hour, and the tears of burning remorse and shame rolled down his cheeks, would not this be his despairing thought — Can iniquities such as mine be pardoned? Can there be forgiveness for such aggravated transgression — such unparalleled, presumptuous sin? Who knows but, as the vision of the holy prophet he had slain rose up before him, adding a new scorpion sting to his agonised conscience — wdio knows but at llie same moment, balm-words of comfort which that prophet

194! SUNSETS ON THE HEBEEW M()U^~TAINB.

had spoken may have fallen on his tossed soul like oil on the troubled waters. Did they not seem to S2:)eak home to him, as if the seer, in uttering them, had his own case of agonising despair specially in view — “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins he as scarlet, they shall he tvhite as snoiu; though they he red like crimson, they shall he as luool.” * “Scarlet and crimson,” indeed, his sins were. But he will take the God of his fathers, the God wdio had borne with him so long and so patiently, at Hi.? word — “When he was in affliction,’’ we read,” he he sought the Lord his God, and humhled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.” •’ God heard the voice of his groaning. A light, brighter than the sun, broke through his jmson bars. He could say with Jeremiah in his dungeon, “/ called upon thy name, 0 Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou dreiuest near in the day that L called upon. thee. Thou saidst, Fear not! “I Perhaps one of his bitterest and saddest thoughts may have been that same terrible influence, already alluded to, which he had exerted, in the past, over his subjects. This thought, in that moment of penitence and ilknnination, may have been uppermost in his spirit, and hardest to bear: —” Oh, that I could undo that guilty past! Oh, that God would spare me to recover strength, and bring me back again to my palace and capital, that I might declare what He hath done for my soul, and seek to counteract these memories of blood-guiltiness and sin I” God did hear him in this matter too; for” he ]jrayed unto him: and he luas entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem, into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that * Isa, i. 18. +2 Chrou. xxxiii. 12. X Lam. iii. 55.

the Lord he was God “* He left Jerusalem bound (soul and body) in fetters, after having closed on himself and his people the temple-gates, and quenched the sacred tire on his fathers’ altars. Now he returns, the possessor of a nobler liberty than he ever before enjoyed, saying, “Ojjen unto me the gates of righteousness; then will I enter into them, and praise the Lord!’” 0 Lord, truly I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. I luill offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and tuill call upon the name of the Lord. L luill pay my voius unto the Lord noiu in the presence of all His p)eople, in the courts of the Lords house, in the midst of thee, 0 Jerusalem.’’ f

Does not all this teach us, that God’s grace can reach any heart, in any place? The soul that contemned God in the consecrated ground of Canaan and Jerusalem, was reached in the heathen city, and in the military prison in heathen Babylon. Prayer, too, needs no sacred places, — no high altar, — no temple-court, — no fretted aisle or gorgeous cathedral to give it power and eflicacy. Wherever there is an earnest heart, there is a present God. The prayer of Saul of Tarsus in heathen Damascus, or when tossed at midnight on the sea of Adria, or when immured in the dungeons of Philippi; and the prayer of Manasseh, here narrated, in this dungeon-keep in Babylon — these, and similar penitential cries of earnest, broken spirits are heard, when many an imposing service and intoned liturgy dies away in empty echoes within “consecrated walls!”

And mark what was the instrumental cause of Manasseh’s conversion. What was it that drove him to his knees, and led

* 2 Chron. xxxiii. 13. + Ps. cxvi. ie-19.

him to know God as the hearer of prayer? It was “when he luas in affliction he besought the Lord his God, and hiniibled himself.” It is Manasseh, “taken among the thorns, and bound with fetters,” who stands before us a new man!

And is not affliction still God’s own angel-messenger?

Does not He still drive His own people amid the thorny brakes of severe trial, — hurl them from their thrones of prosperity, and immure them “in darkness and in the deeps,”- — just that He may dash to pieces all their earthly confidences, break their hard, stubborn hearts, send them to their knees, and save their souls?

Ah, how many can tell, “But for these thorn -brakes, these fetters of trial, I would still have been an enemy to my God, plunging into greater and greater sin? But I may well take these thorns and chains together, and weave them into a garland of triumph.” It is said that the mother eagle inserts a thorn in the nest, to drive her young brood to the wing. God puts many a thorn in His people’s downy nest of ease and worldly prosperity, to urge them to rise heavenward. If Manasseh had not known the thorns, the fetters, and the dark lrison, in all human probability, he had lived and died an idolater. If Moab had not been “emptied from vessel to vessel” he would have “settled on his lees.” If many of the redeemed, spoken of in Revelation, had not ‘’ come out of great tribulation “they would not have been in their white robes” before the throne! ‘^

III. Let us now proceed to consider Manasseh’s new life. The grand test of the reality of conversion, is the regenerated being. The tree is known by its fruits. The purified

A DAEK DAY AND A BRIGnT SUNSET. 197

foimtain is known by its streams. AVitli many, alas! reairning prosperity only hardens the heart, causing it to lapse into its old state of callous indifference.

It might have been so with Manasseh when the dungeon-vault was left, and when, under a royal escort, he was once more conducted back to his palace and crown. He might have basely spurned the hand that rescued him, and relapsed into his old courses. But he stood the test. We read that it was WHEN God had brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom, “then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God”

It must have been a noble sight, to see him, in the face of his whole people, not only manifesting the saving change in his own heart and life, but as all true religion is expansive, and seeks the good of others, commencing at once religious and civil, ecclesiastical and political, reform. He began by cutting down, root and branch, all his old abominations. The statues of Ashtaroth, — the heathen groves, — the defiled altars, — all are swept away. Nor was it a mere external reformation, — a mere negative religion, — the “ceasing to do evil.” But he taught himself, and he taught his people, “to do well,” “He repaired the altar of the Lord, and sacrificed thereon ye iceofferings and thank-offerings.’” Offerings for sin, and offerings of gratitude for mercies. He became himself a preacher of righteousness. It was a great revival in Judah. “He stood by the altar, and’’ we read, “commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel.” He evidently returned in the spirit of Zaccheus the publican, resolved to “restore fourfold;” saying, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?”

Strange but joyous sight to the true Israel of God in

Jerusalem — those who for years had wept in secret over their monarch’s sins, and over “the holy and beautiful house where their fathers worshipped” — to behold now the long-smouldering ashes again kindled on the altar for the morning and evening sacrifice, — the king’s own voice joining in the solemn hymn, “Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever”

Add to all this, and as a proof that worldly wisdom and prudence, in the best sense of the word, go hand in hand with true piety, he set himself with equal vigour to the strengthening of his kingdom. He reared a wall on the defenceless side of his capital, besides augmenting the strongholds of his fenced cities. He was more a king than ever. All his praying, and praising, and temple- worship, had made him no fatalist, no presumptuous dreamer. It was no creed of his — “God will save us; we need not trouble ourselves about defence or munitions, — walls or standing armies, horses or chariots, — the Lord will fight our battles!” No! his piety served only to invigorate his patriotism. He acted out the truth of that grand apostolic maxim,” Jot slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.’’

True piety requires us not to sink into sentimental devotion, — a dreamy life of inaction or enthusiasm, — but to interfuse all worldly work with religion; — to let life’s duties be saturated with the fear of God; — erecting our churches, yet building our dockyards; — rearing our altars, yet casting our cannon ; — letting the white wings of commerce be studding our seas, and brinoinoj back laden stores from distant continents, yet sending, at the same time, to heaven the winged vessels of pr§yer; — waiting in faith for their return, laden

A DAKK DAY AND A EEIGnT SUXSET. 199

ftitli costlier merchandise; — taking religion and incorporating it with daily life, — letting it regulate our transactions behind the counter, in the exchange, in the family, in the world, and proving to all the truth of that noble aphorism — “A Christian is the highest style of ma7i.”

We may conclude this chapter with a word of warning, and a word of encouragement.

The word of luarning may be read from the consequences of Manasseh s guilt: —

He was a penitent, a sincere penitent. His aggravated sins were all pardoned and forgiven, and he afterwards lived and died, a true “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” an “heir of promise.” But the deadly influence of his early life of sin, was not so easily obliterated. V»“e have already casually alluded to the fact, and return to it once more. If you read the sequel to his brief history, you will find that with all his efforts and zeal, he could only at best effect a partial reformation. He found that personal repentance was an easier thing than national; — that it was easier far, in the earlier part of his reign, to undo the effect of his father’s virtues, than in the bitter part, to undo his own crimes. “Nevertheless,” we read, “the people did sacrifice still in the high ylcices.” Ah! how it would embitter his closing days to see, here and there, polluted incense still rising from unhallowed groves and altars, and the trumpet of vengeance sounding its retributive note in his ear, — “Be sure your sin will find you out!” Even in his own private funeral obsequies and secluded tomb, we can see a fruit of his early sin. By his reformation, and return to the worship of his father’s God, he had alienated the conipanloiis of his guilt and the abettors of his idolatrous practices. Those, on the other hand, who gladly hailed his change of min ‘, would be slow, as is generally the case, to credit the reality; and even if certified of this, they could never heartily forgive, or at least forget, the murderer of their fathers or mothers or children. Dying, therefore, though he did, a believer — a true child of Abraham — many tears did not follow him to the grave, nor did willing hands rear a monument to his memory; moreover, he himself, painfully aware how his inconsistent former life had compromised him in the eyes of his people, might forbid the funeral pomp usually accompanying royal obsequies. With no feigned humility, he had probably, as the shedder of the blood of God’s prophets, pronounced his ashes unworthy to mix wdth that of his nobler ancestry, and on his death-bed given instructions that his interment might take place within the precincts of his own garden.

Reader, beware of sin. Think of the bitter consequences it entails, — how by unholy acts or inconsistent deeds, influence is lessened or character lost. Avoid debateable ground. Keep off from what is likely to compromise you. Remember righteous Lot. He made little after all of the rich plains of Sodom and its luxurious capital. Men pointed at him with the finger of scorn. Dark stains blotted the close of his life. Even in the case of Idanasseh, with a nobler and more consistent termination to existence (many years, as we may surmise, of devotedness to the God of Israel), — yet ili was easier for men to remember Manasseh the infidel, the scoffer, the profligate, the persecutor, the reckless prodigal, — than Manasseh the converted, the royal penitent, the prodigal restored, the wondrous monument of divine grace and mercy!

But we have also, as we watch this singular ‘•’sunset,” a lesson of encouragement

We have a glorious testimony, in the case of Manasseh, that no sinner need despair. He is now stooping over the walls of heaven, in company with Saul the blasphemer, Zaccheus the extortioner, the Magdalene of the Pharisee’s house, the dying felon of Calvary, and proclaiming tlat, for the vilest sinner, there is mercy. Yes, although this man had defied his God; had scorned pious counsels; had added bloodshed and cruelty to rampant unbelief and lawless lust; — yet when the blast of God’s trumpet sounded over the apparently impregnable citadel of his heart, it fell to the dust; and from that hour, in which grace triumphed, its walls became “salvation and its gates praise.”

And that grace which saved Manasseh, can save every one of us, — the poorest, the vilest, the most desponding.

Is there one such whose eye traces these pages; — some one whose whole past life is one sad foul retrospect, — a story of aggravated guilt and impiety, — a father’s counsels, a mother’s prayers, mocked and scorned; — deep, dark stains blotting every page of conscience and memory? Have God’s bowmen of conviction found you in the thorns? Have they dragged you to some dungeon of despair, and left you, amid the darkness of its rayless vaults, to brood over impending death? Oh! send up your cry for mercy to INIanasseh’s God. He will not scorn you. No; though you have scorned Him, scorned His people, scorned His mercies, scorned His afflictions, scorned His providence, scorned His ministers, yet He will not scorn you. ‘He tuill regard the erg of the destitute, and luill not despise their prayer’’ This story of

Manasseh has been “luritten for the generations to come, that the 2’>eople luhich shall he created may jnaise the Lord.”*

And is there no special encouragement here to Christian parents? We have alluded, more than once, to Manasseh scorning his father’s piety and prayers. We have spoken of good Hezekiah, as his end approached, imbuing that young heart with these prayers, pouring on that young kingly brow this best anointing oil. Alas! is it another case on which to found the sneer of the infidel? — “What need is there of prayer? Here is another testimony that the prayer of pious lips ascends in vain. Hezekiah prays. But the heavens are as brass and the earth as iron. The Lord has ‘not heard,’ the ‘God of Jacob has not regarded.’ This child of prayer grows up a daring and defiant unbeliever. ‘Is there a God on the earth? ‘”

Nay, 0 man; who art thou that repliest against God? Hezekiah’s prayer is heard. His cries have not entered in vain into the ears of the God of Sabaoth. “The vision is yet for an appointed time, hut at the end it shall speak, and shall not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”-]’ Years upon years — half a lifetime — had elapsed, — since the arrow of prayer had sped from Hezekiah’s bow. But when the good old king is sleeping his deep sleep, in the regal sepulchre on Zion, lo! in yonder far-off dungeon, washed by the tide of the distant Euphrates, the arrow has reached its mark; the word of the Lord is tried; — “Cast thy bread upon the luaters, and thou ^nAii find it after many days.” I

* Ps. cii. 18, t Hab. il 3. X Ec. xi. 1.