he was free from the trammels which confined a Jewish prince during his minority, be courageously set himself to undo the ill that his father and grandfather had done, to abolish the strange rites, to drive out the foul idolatries, and to restore the worship of Jehovah. An<l he earned the praise that "Like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all bis might, according to all the Law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him " (eh. xxiii. 26), We may learn from this history not to assign too much weight to a man's surroundings, but to bol<l firm to the belief that there is in each man a sufficient force of personality and will to enable him, if his heart be set on well-doing, to resist any amount of external circumstances, and to mould his life and character for himself, even in the exact opposi tc shape to that whereto all the external circumstances pointe<l, and which they might have seemed to have rendered necessary. Vers. 8-13.-.A strange loss, and a strange recovery. The loss by a nation of its sacred book is a strange and extraordinary occurrence, Books deemed sacred are naturally so highly valued and so deeply reverenced that the utmost care is taken of them, Generally, copies are multiplied and are in so many bands that the loss of all, while the nation itself survives, is practically impossible. It is practically impossible, nowadays, that the Christians should lose their Bible, or the Mobammedans their Kor:i.n, or the Hindoos their Vedas, or the Parsees their Zendavesta, or the Chinese their Shu- King or their Taou-tih-King, To understand what had taken place in Palestine shortly before Josiah came to the throne, we must consider the peculiar circumstances of the Jewish religion, and the place which "the book of Law" occupied in it. The following points are especially worthy of note. I. THE ORIGINAL BOOK OF THE LAW WAS DEPOSITED BESIDE THE ARK, AND KEPT THERE. "It came to pass," we are told," when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this Law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses co=anded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the Law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against them " (Deut, xxxi. 24:-26). II. THERE WAS NO PROVISION FOR MAKING COPIES OF IT UNTIL BUCH TIME AS ISRAEL SHOULD HAVE KINGS. Then indeed each king was to "write him a copy of the Law in a book out of that which was before the priests the Levites n (Deut. xvii. 18). But, except on such occasions, the book, it would seem, remained in the ark, and was not lent about to be copied. III, THE DESIGN WAS TO MAKE THE LAW KNOWN TO THE PEOPLE BY READING IT TO THEM PUBLICLY. Such reading was prescribed once in each seven years, in the sab- batical year, at the Feast of Tabernacles (Dent. xxxi. 10-13). Under Nehemiah certainly (Neh. viii. 2-5), perhaps at other times, the precept was acted on. IV. MULTIPLICATION OF COPIEBWAB NOT NEEDED FOR SYNAGOGUES, WHICH DID NOT AS YET EXIST. The result was that probably, besides the temple copy, very few copies of the Law bad at any time existed. Irreligious kings, as Rehoboam, .A.bijah, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon, would, as a matter of o ,urse, disobey the precept to make a copy; and it is not even certain that all religious kings would carry out the precept. David, whose delight was in the Law (Ps. cxix. 77), Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joash, Heze- kiah, would almost certainly have made copies; but Solomon may not have done so, nor Amaziah, nor Uzziah, nor J otham. If the prophets seem to show such a familiarity with the Law as implies constant study, it may well be that the "schools Lf the pro- phets" were in possession of some of the royal autograph copies, or the prophets may bave been allowed access as often as they required it to the temple copy. Passages of the Law, as the Decalogue and other precepts regarding conduct, or, again, the promises made to the patriarchs, and to the nation at large through Moses, may have been wic\ely known, being fixed in the memory of the people, and passed ou from father to son by word of mouth. And these well-known passages may also have sometimes taken a writton shape. But entire copies of the Law must, even in the time of the later kings, have been exceedingly scarce. Thus when an irreligious king like Manasseh set asi<le the Jehovistic worship, and thrust, it may be, into lumber-rooms, the old furniture of the temple, so that the book of the Law, i.e. the temple copy, became mislaid or lost, there watt no very ready way of replacing it. Nor, rerhaps, did there seem to be any «2 THE SECOND DOOK OF 'l'llE KINGS. [uH. xxn. 1-20,
absolute necessity of so doing. Except once in Aeven years, the reading of the Law does not appear to have formed a part of any temple service. 'l'ho precepts of the Law were inculcated orally by priests and Levites who had received them from their pre- decessors. Hilkiah and the priests generally were probably content to carry on the traditional teaching, and did not feel the need of seekina the water of life from the fountain-head. But suddenly a discovery was made. Tb.ere had been no wanton or malignant destruction of the book of the Law. It had merely been thrust out of sight, and then forgotten. As the repair and restoration of the temple proceeded, and even lumber-rooms and closets were searched, that the whole building miaht be brought into proper order, those emplo.ved in the work came upon the lost volume.. It was, probably, very easily recognized. As Bahr says, it may have been "distinguished by its external appearance, size, material, beauty of the writing," etc., as the Samaritan copy of the Pentateuch at Nablous is distinguished. Or it may have had for its title, "The Book of the Law of the Lord by the hand of Moses" (2 Chron. x:u:iv.14). 'l.'here may even have been prirsrs living who had seen the book before it was lost, and knew it as the volume with which, fifty years before, they had been familiar. .At any rate, r,riests, king, and people unanimously, though with much grief and fear, accepted it. The prophetess, who was God's mouthpiece at the time, confirmed their view; and it remained for nineternth-century critics to throw a doubt upon the conclusion thus come t-0, and to brand the w, ,rk as a forgery of Hilkiab's, or as a chance production of a chance author, who had amused himself by composing a code of laws for a Utopia.