2 Kings xviii. 4. ITe brake in pieces the hrasen serpent that Moses had made : for unto those days the children of Israel did burti incense to it : and he called it Nehushtan.
WE too often see the children of godly parents turning aside from the principles in which they have been educated, and deserting the paths which parental piety has marked out for them. Here we behold a youth, whose father was branded with a special mark of infamy on account of his numerous and aggravated^ impieties, shining with a brighter lustre
a 2 Chron. xxviii.
than any other of the kings of Judah^. No sooner did he come to the throne of his father than he set himself to counteract all the evil which his father had done. At the early age of twenty-five he com- menced a reformation, which, for the time at least, was attended with the happiest effects. " He re- moved the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made." It seems that the veneration in which that memorial of God's mercy had been held, had degenerated into the grossest superstition. Where the brasen serpent had been preserved for so long a period, we are not informed. Had it been placed within the sanctuary, with the pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, being concealed from the view both of the people and the priests, it would not have become an object of idolatrous regard. But it is not to be wondered at, that, when idols of every kind were multiplied in the land, this, which as a memorial of God's mercy was really entitled to most affectionate respect, should have divine honours paid to it. The use which was made of it by the Jewish people naturally leads me to shew, Iloza prone men are to superstition : whilst the zeal of Hezekiah in destroying it, will properly afford me an occasion yet further to shew. How earnest hj we ought, all of us according to our ability, to counteract the superstition that is around us.
Observe then,
I. How prone men are to superstition —
Superstition, I am aware, may exist, without being- carried to the extent in which it prevailed amongst the Jews at this time. But the same ingredients are found in it, whatever be the degree in which it pre- vails. In the instance before us its component parts are manifest. The Jews carried their veneration of the brasen serpent to a very culpable excess : they assigned to it a sanctity, which it did not possess — they ascribed to it a glory, which it did not merit — they
•^ ver. 5, 6.