religion were kept up, but the spirit had evaporated. Men thron,,.ed God's courts brought abundant offerings, made many prayers, kept the new moons" and the sabbath; and the appoin_ted feasts, but without any real care for the honour of God or any thought of seekmg to serve and obey him. Hence their worship was" an offence•" t.heir ceremonies were mockeries, their oblations "vain," their solemn meetin'gr "iniquity." God was "weary to bear them" (Isa. i. 11-15). II. 'l'HE LO)':G DELAY IN THEm PUNISHMENT. More than two centuries hnd elapsed since Judah began to "do evil in the sight of the Lord, and to provoke him to jealousy ~ith their sins which they had committed, ~hove all that their fathers had done" (1 Kings xiv. 22). Above a century had passed emce the :\postasy of Jehoram and Ahaziah. During all this time Judah had maintained her independence, had received no severo blow, fa.lien under no crushing affliction. Latterly, she had even prospered. Under Uzziah she had recovered Elath (eh. xiv. 22), conquered a part of Philistia (2 Chron. xxvi. 6), defeated the Arabians and Mehunim (2 Chron. xxvi. 7), and made the Ammonites her tributaries (2 Chron. xxvi. 8); under Jotham she had maintained these conqu..-ists, and ~hen Ammon re".ol~ had reduc~ her to subjection _(2 C~ron. xxvii. 5) without any difficulty. God, in his long-suffering mercy, bore with his people, He would win them by kindness, draw them to him by cords of love, at any rate give them ample time for repentance. But it was in vain. The longer he left them unpunished, the further they wandered from the right way, and the more they hardened their hearts. The time came when the prophet could only say of them, "Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. . . . The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores" (Isa. i. 4-6). Ill 'J'HE SUDDENNESS AND OVERWHELlllNG FORCE WITH WHIOH THE PUNIBHMENT DESCENDED WHEN IT CAME. Bishop Butler remarks how, in the punishment which God brings upon vicious individuals in this world, there is often a long respite. "After the chief bad consequences, temporal consequences, of their follies have been delayed for a great while; at length they break in irresistibly, like an armed force; repentance is ioo late to relieve, and can only serve to aggravate their distress; the case is become desperate, and poverty and sickness, remorse and anguish, Jnfamy and death. the efftcts of their own doings, overwhelm them, beyond possibility of remedy or escape" (' Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed,' pt. i. eh. ii. p. 52). And so it is often with nations; so it was now with the nation of the Jews. As soon as the punishment began, blow was dealt upon blow. First, Rezin "smote them, and carried away a. great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus" (2 Chron. xxviii. 5), Then they were delivered in to the hand of Pekab, who "smote them with a great slaughter, slaying a hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men" (2 Chron. xxviii 5, 6). Next, Edom had her fling at the sick lion, and "came and smote Judah, and carried away captives" (2 Chron. xxviii. 17). '£hen Philistia attacked the cities of the low COUiitry, and of the south of Judah, and took a number of them, "and dwelt there" (2 Chron. xxvili. 18). Presently, Pekah and Rezin, joining their forces, advanced together to the siege of Jerusalem. All was lost, except only honour; and then honour was thrown into the gulf; Judah went down on her knees to Assyria, and implored aid, gave tribute, accepted a suzerain, made the inglorious confession, "I am thy servant and thy son" (eh. xvi. 7). Having incurred defeat, disgrace, the loss of military honour, the loss of the flower of her troops, she cro~ns all by giving up her national independence, inviting a master, and herself placrng a foreiun yoke upon her own shoulders. But for the wonderful efforts macle by Hezek;_h when he ascended the throne (eh. xviii. 3-8), Judroa's ruin would have been completed under Ahaz; and the punishment so long delayed, when it came, would have been final, "without escape or remedy." Vers.10-17.-A wicked king allowed to have his way by a weak priest. The double regime, civil aud ecclesiastical, which it pleased God to establish in his first Church, the Jewish, and to continue, with certain modifications, in his second Church, ~he Christian, seems to have been designed for the mutual advantage of both pa.rt1ea, OH, XVI, 1-20.] THE SECOND BOOK OF THE KINGS. 321
Authority, in whatever hands it is placed, is always Hable to be abueed, to over-assert itself, to grow arbitrary, autocratic, tyrannical. Hence the necessity of checks, of a b11lance ~f forces, of counterpoise, of an arrangement by which the undue preponderance of any smgle authority shall be prevented. It is sometimes needful that the civil authority shall interpose to keep the spiritual within due boundi!, and disallow the 'lBtablishment of sacerdotal tyranny. It is quite as often reqnisite for the spiritualty to assert itself, and check the endeavours of kings and nobles to establish an unlimited autocracy. From tima to time the two independent authorities, the civil and ecclesi- astical, the regale and the pontificale, are sure to come into collision. Our own history presents instances in the struggles of Anselm against Rufus, of Becket against Henry II., and of the seven bishops against the last of the Stuart kings. Under such circum- stances weakness on either side constitutes a serious peril to the community. A weak king, priest-ridden, makes dangerous concessions to the ecclesiastical order, and imperils the peace and prosperity of his kingdom by so doing. A weak priest, timid and tirne- serving, allows the rights of his order to be trampled on, and lays up no less an amount of trouble in the future for the nation to which he belongs. If Ahaz had been succeeded by another worldly minded and ambitious king, instead of the pious Hezekiah, there is no saying how low the ecclesiastical authority might not have sunk, or how soon the kingly office might not have freed itself from all checks, and have become absolute, and in a short time tyrannical. Urijah did his best to destroy the constitution of his country, and to turn the Judrean limited monarchy into a pure despotism. He was weak rather than wicked; but his weaknesH might have had the worst results. It was only the accident of Ahaz being succeeded by a truly religious prince that prevented the precedent, which he had set, from entailing ruinous consequencea.