The Pulpit Commentary — 2 Kings — Section 327

we would now fasten our attention, is that mentioned in ver. 4, "He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehusbtan." His method for extirpating idolatry from his country is detailed with minuteness in 2 Chron. xxix. 3; xxx. 1-9. In thia destruction of the brazen serpent we are struck with two things. 1. The perverting tendency of sin. The brazen serpent (we learn from Numb. xxi. 9) was a beneficent ordinance of God to heal those in the wilderness who bad been bitten by the fiery ~erpcnts. But this Divine ordinance, designed for a good purpose, and which had accomplished good, was now, through the forces of human dopravity, become a great e\·il. The Jews turned what was n special display of Divine goodness into a great evil. I am disposed to honour them for preserving it for upwards of seven hundred years, and thus handing it down from sire to son as a memorial of heavenly mercy; but their conduct in establishing it as an object for worship must be denounced without hesitancy or qualification. But is not this the great law of depravity? Has it not always per- verted the good things of God, and thus converted blessings into curses? It has ever done so. It is doing so now. See how this perverting power acts in relntion to such Didne blessings as (1) health; (2) riches; (3) genius; (4) knowled<>e; (5) govern- ments; and (6) religious institutions.1 2. The true attributes of a, refo°rmer. • Here we observe: (1) spiritual insight. Hezekiah (if our translation is correct) saw in this serpent, which appeared like a god to the people, nothing but a piece of brass-" Nehustan." What is grand to the vulgar is contemptible to the spiritually thoughtful. The true reformer peers into the heart of things, and finds that the gods of the people are but of common brass. (2) Invincible honesty. He not only saw that it was brass, but said so--declared it in the ears of the people. How many there are who have eyes to see the vile and contemptible in the objects which popular feeling admires and adores, but who la.ck the honesty to express their convictions I A true man not only sees the wrong, but exposes it. (3) Practical courage. This reformer not only had the insight to see, and the honesty to expose the worthlessness of the people's gods, but he bad the courage to strike them from their pedestal. "He brake in pieces the brazen serpent." I have no hope of any man doing any real spiritual good who bas not these three instincts. He must not only have an eye to penetrate the seeming and to descry the real, nor merely be honest enough to speak out his views, but be must have also the manly hand to "break in pieces" the false, in order to do the Divine work of reform. The man that has the three combined is the reformer. Almighty Love I multiply amongst us men of this threefold instinct-men which the age, the world demands 11 3. The true soul of a, reformer. What is that which gave him the true insight and attributes of a reformer-which in truth was the soul of the whole? (1) Entire conse- cration to the right. "He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For be clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses. He trusted in and clave to the One true and living God, and kept his commandments. And this is right, and there is no right but this. (2) Invincible antagonism to the wrong. "And he rebelled against the King of Assyria, and served him not." "The yearly tribute his father had stipulated to pay, be withheld. Pursuing the policy of a truly theocratic sovereign, he was, through the Divine blessing which rested on his government, raised to a position of great public and national strength. Shalmaneser was dead; and assuming, consequently, that full independent sovereignty which God had settled on the house of David, he both shook off the Assyrian yoke, and, by an energetic movement against the Philistines, recovered the credit which his father Ahaz had lost in his war with that people (2 C'hron. ixviii. 18)." II. A BUTBLEBS DESPOTISM. There are two despots mentioned in this ohapter- Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, both kings of Assyria. A brief description of the former we have in vers. 9, 10, 12. What is stated in these verses is but a repetition of what we have in the preceding chapter, and the remarks made on it in our last homily nreclude the uecessity of any observations here. This Shalraaneser was a tyrant of the 1 f· See Hornlli.st, voL ii 193. 11 Beo a full CW!COIUIB o tbil nbjeot in • Septem in UDO,' p. 96. Oa. xvnt. 1-37.J TlIE SECOND BOOK OF THE KINGS. 8'76