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NINEVEH JUDGING JERUSALEM.

[Serm Church and of Mankind, when they were apt to look for the main proof of it in a single text. I do not say that we have any authority for so bold a course as this. I merely urge it as a duty that we should be silent when we are ignorant. If we have real reverence for Scripture, and a firm belief in that which it declares, we shall never strain a single one of its words or phrases, or strain a single fact to make it fit them. Abstinence from such dishonesty will assuredly bring its reward in clearer apprehensions of the whole record hereafter.

But the words, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas," illustrated by the words of St. Luke, “As Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall the Son of Man be to this generation, as well as " by the further words, "The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgement with this generation and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here," contain a meaning which is not affected by the omission of this clause. The Jews asked our Lord for a visible sign in the heavens to confirm his authority. He answered them that Jonah himself and the message which he brought were sufficient signs to the heathens of Nineveh. Their consciences confessed that God was speaking to them; they felt that a King whom they could not see was near them claiming their homage; they turned to Him. The Jews, the people of God, chosen out of all the countries to acknowledge that unseen presence and proclaim it, they had become such idolaters, so blind and deaf in heart that they could believe only some outward visible image; the cry to turn to their king was utterly lost upon them. He himself was among them, the Word by whom all their

XX.]

THE JUDGMEMT OF THE CHURCH.

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prophets had spoken, the King who was sitting on the holy hill of Zion. Why were they not able to hear Him? Was it not because He was the Son of Man? because He came with a message to Man, and they, shut up in their pride and exclusiveness, did not like to take up their position among men, did not care for a voice which was addressed to men? The people of Nineveh therefore repented at the preaching of Jonah; the people of Jerusalem did not repent at the preaching of Jesus. The Jew, because he was inhuman, was necessarily ungodly. He would not acknowledge the Son of Man; practically he could not believe in Jehovah. And so the city, that holy city, would become the bloody city; in it would be fulfilled the law which had been fulfilled in the Assyrian Capital. Awful and everlasting witness of the divine order; which asserted itself without respect of persons then, which will assert itself without respect of persons always! The Christian Church, the Church of the human race has been almost as slow to maintain its true privilege of preaching the glad tidings of Love and Truth to the human race as the Jewish nation its forerunner was. Christian prophets have shrunk from their commission, fled from the face of the Lord, been angry that God was more gracious than they were, mourned over their perishing gourds, have distrusted Him who cares for the men and the women and the cattle in every country under heaven. But the Church must publish God's righteousness and God's grace to men, let its members be ever so unwilling. If the tongues of prophets are silent, if divine feasts and worship cease, then by its own captivity it will be taught itself, it will teach mankind, who is its King, its Judge, its Saviour.

SERMON XXI.

MANASSEH AND JOSIAH; ZEPHANIAH AND HABAKKUK.

LINCOLN'S INN. 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.-MAY 2, 1852.

HABAKKUK, II. 4.

Behold his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith.

THERE is a tradition that Isaiah survived Hezekiah and suffered death in the days of Manasseh. Even the manner of his death has been determined; it has been said that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to him when he speaks of some having been sawn asunder. A vague rumour of this kind cannot be of the least help in determining the application of a prophecy, and there are no words in the book of Isaiah which warrant us in extending any part of it beyond the time denoted by the opening verse. The belief that he became a martyr arose from the improbability that any righteous man could be suffered to live in the days of Manasseh.

These days are described to us as darker than any which had preceded them in the kingdom of Judah. "The king did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. For he built up again the high

Serm. XXI.] THE YEARS AFTER HEZEKIAH.

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places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove as did Ahab king of Israel, and worshipped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."-2 Kings, c. xxi. vv. 2–16.

This state of things must have lasted a long time. He was but twelve years old when he began to reign, so that the violent change may not have begun at once, though it is quite possible that some of the counsellers, who had brought vain oblations and been very active on the new moons and Sabbaths during the reign of the father, may have cultivated all the superstitious and idolatrous tendencies that were ripening in the mind of the son, and may have encouraged him to set up groves and high-places even during his minority. However as he reigned fifty and five years, this supposition is hardly necessary to account for the extent and completeness of the reaction. Nor will any attentive reader of Isaiah and Micah feel astonished by it. They, especially the last, enable us to see the seeds of all corruption in a period of health. The lying prophet, the drunken priest, may have been hidden, even may have been externally reformed, in the later golden years of Hezekiah; but the soil, out of which they had grown and which had cherished them, was sure to produce the like weeds afterwards whenever the diligent culture was withdrawn from it, even if their growth was not fostered and quickened by the hands which should have extirpated them.

362

MANASSEH A CAPTIVE.

[Serm.

We do not hear of any special prophet at this time. Probably there was no one then whose visions were committed to writing, no one perhaps whose visions extended beyond the immediate evil and its coming punishment. Mere simple denunciations such as we heard of among the early seers of Israel, may have supplied the place of the winding discourse and the song that rose from the depths of earth to the heights of Heaven. This we should infer from the words in the Book of Kings; "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 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 out of Egypt even unto this day."-2 Kings, c. xxi. vv. 10–15.

The immediate accomplishment of this prediction is thus recorded in the 2nd Book of Chronicles, c. xxxiii.: “Wherefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon." Babylon which had revolted from the Assyrian empire had again become a portion of it. That empire was exhibiting