And the Gentiles shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
All they gather themselves together,
They come to thee:

Thy sons shall come from far,

And thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.

Then thou shalt see, and flow together,

And thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged;

Because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee,

The forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.

The gross darkness is the sin and ignorance in which all the world lay, ere the shining of the Gospel light, when sons and daughters should be gathered to the Church, and after all her persecutions (Isaiah lx.)—

The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee;

And all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the

soles of thy feet:

And they shall call thee, The city of the LORD, The Zion of the
Holy One of Israel.

And again, though the Jews should not believe, and must be cast off, yet still to the Church was promised (Isaiah xlix.) :—

The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other,
Shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me :

Give place to me that I may dwell.

Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these,
Seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate,

A captive, and removing to and fro?

And who hath brought up these?

Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?

Thus saith the Lord GOD,

Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles,

And set up my standard to the people :

And they shall bring thy sons in their arms,

And thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.

And kings shall be thy nursing fathers,

And their queens thy nursing mothers:

They shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth,
And lick up the dust of thy feet;

And thou shalt know that I am the LORD;

For they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.

Here is our charter. We are the children that the Church has had after losing the Jews, because of their unbelief. Thus it is the chief glory of Christian kings and queens to be employed as the

foster parents of the children, the Church common to their care. Such were the hopes and visions that upbore Isaiah and his holy king through the dark future that was first to come, looking on as they did to that time when the faithful Church is promised that "the sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." (Isaiah lx.)

For, as St. John beheld-and as may we all yet behold, "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." (Rev. xxi.)

We know not as yet what the beauty of that city will be; for, as once again Isaiah has told us (Isaiah lxiv.) :—

For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard, nor
perceived by the ear,

Neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee,
What he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.

LESSON LXXXVI.

THE REIGN OF MANASSEH.

B.C. 698.-2 CHRON. Xxxiii. 1—10; 2 KINGS xxi. 10—16.

And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death. And Manasseh his son reigned in his stead.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem.

*

But did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.

For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down, and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them.

Also he built altars in the house of the LORD, whereof the LORD had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be for ever.

And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.

* He must have been proclaimed king at his birth, for these fifty-five years are the years of his life.

And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

And he set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:

Neither will I any more remove the foot of Israel from out of the land which I have appointed for your fathers; so that they will take heed to do all that I have commanded them, according to the whole law and the statutes and the ordinances by the hand of Moses.

So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel.

And the LORD spake by his servants the prophets, saying,

Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols:

Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.

And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.

And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies.

Because they have done that which was evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day.

Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.

COMMENT.-We owe a great deal to the holy king Hezekiah, one of the three kings whom the preacher pronounces not to have been found defective. We have seen how he restored the continual Psalmody in the Temple, and he also caused a new book to be added to the Psalter, the third, consisting of the seventeen psalms from the 73rd to the 89th (inclusive), almost all written by Asaph and the Koralines, except some of David's, which had not yet been added to the Temple service, the 88th, said to have come down from the bondage in Egypt, and the 89th, a long psalm by a Levite, giving the whole account of God's promise to David and His dealings with his line. Besides this, "the men of Hezekiah" copied out six chapters

of Proverbs, four of them Solomon's, that had been current among the people, but not yet added to the Scripture; and he seems to have had the first collection of the writings of the prophets made—those of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, and Isaiah. No doubt the flood of inspiration that the Levites and Isaiah then lived in, enabled them to choose those writings that had the salt of inspiration.

But when Hezekiah slept in his "noble sepulchre" at the end of the fifteen years added to his life, and all the people had done him honour, the son who had been given at last was but twelve years old, and the people whom all the teachings and the blessings of Hezekiah's twenty-nine years' reign had failed to turn from their "evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God," went back to their sin, and perverted their young king.

Every form of idolatry seems to have been followed. The high places were rebuilt, altars raised to the many gods, the wooden pillar of Ashtaroth set up; altars to the sun, moon, and stars, after the Assyrian fashion, placed in the courts of the Temple itself, the horrible Moloch image again erected in the vale of Tophet, and the king's own child sacrificed. And together with this Manasseh was superstitious. He observed times—that is, he inquired into lucky and unlucky days, a favourite fancy all over the East, and one against which Moses had warned men (Deut. xviii.) :—

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a

necromancer.

:

For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

He had recourse to all modes of inquiring into the future, except the one rightly appointed; and to such a pass did he bring his unhappy people, that they were absolutely worse than the heathen nations round them. The prophets spared not to tell him of his danger. They told him that he was filling up the measure of the doom of Judah, and that as Amos had once seen a measure and a plumb-line marking Samaria for destruction (Amos vii. 7; Lesson LIII.), so was the same measure and plummet of destruction to be

applied to Judah, and that Jerusalem should be emptied of inhabitants like a dish wiped out and turned upside down. No doubt the wizards and witches told Manasseh pleasanter things than these. He became enraged, and persecuted the faithful. It is generally believed that, in his extreme old age, the great prophet Isaiah was put, by this wicked king, to the cruel death of being sawn asunder, and that it is partly to this that St. Paul refers, when he speaks of the witnesses of the faith of old in these words (Heb. xi. 37-8) :—

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.

(Of whom the world was not worthy.)

And truly it is only likely that Isaiah, who beheld his Saviour more plainly than any other, would be made partaker of His Cross by martyrdom, when he would be sustained by the hope he knew that his eyes should see the King in His beauty.

LESSON LXXXVII.

THE RE-PEOPLING OF SAMARIA.

2 KINGS xvii. 24—41.

And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof.

And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which slew some of them.

Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.

Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry hither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.

Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the