people give that their religious profession was sincere ?

MARY. Mama, they rooted out idolatry, and put down idolatrous priests, just as Asa and Hezekiah had done—only more thoroughly; for the groves, and high places, and all, were destroyed, and the idols stamped to powder, just like Aaron's calf.

MAMA. What place, remarkable for its horrid rites (of which we read lately,) did they "defile?"

MARY. "Tophet," Mama; "which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom," that people might never burn their children there any more.

MAMA. How ancient, and consequently deeprooted, were some of the sorts of idol-worship abolished by Josiah?

MARY. As old as Solomon. You remember the long list we had of his " abominations," and they are mentioned again here.

MAMA. Yes; and you see how permanent and destructive had proved the example of this once wise, and latterly infatuated, prince. But what singular act of retribution do we read of here, by which Josiah fulfilled a prediction uttered centuries before his birth?

MARY. His burning dead men's bones upon the altar at Bethel, set up by Jeroboam; just as the

poor prophet had foretold that was killed by the

lion.

MAMA. Turn back to 1st Kings, chapter xiii., that you may observe the wonderful minuteness of the prophecy. How does it run?

MARY. "O altar, altar! thus saith the Lord, A child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests that burn incense, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee."

MAMA. A marvellous prophecy ! and very unlikely at the time to be fulfilled, as nothing short of the utter ruin and desolation of the stronger and then flourishing kingdom of Israel, could enable a monarch of Judah to overthrow and pollute the chief seat of idolatry, in a neighbouring territory; and as it does not appear that Josiah knew any thing of the prophecy till embarked in the pious work, his unconscious fulfilment of its very letter is rendered more striking still. To what joyful celebration was this "cleansing of the land" preparatory?

MARY. To a solemn passover, Mama; such as had never been kept " from the days of the Judges that judged Israel ;" and it adds, "there was no

king like him either before or after.”

MAMA. Was the end of this good prince as peaceful as his life had been prosperous?

MARY. No; he was killed in a battle with the king of Egypt. What business had he to be there?

MAMA. None, my dear. The Chronicles indeed tell us that he was strongly dissuaded, and that in the name of the Lord, by the former from molesting him in an enterprise sanctioned by God against the king of Assyria; but Josiah "would not hearken;" and his untimely death was the consequence of this unprovoked aggression. We are told that his people mourned greatly for him, and that the " singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations even unto this day." But a still greater honour to his memory is recorded, viz. that he was lamented by Jeremiah the prophet; whose regrets must have been much aggravated by knowledge of the character of his contemptible successors, and the withdrawal in Josiah of the last bulwark which interposed between the devoted land of Judah and the long-impending vengeance of the Almighty. In the next two chapters we shall see its fatal accomplishment; and if the lesson should prove a melancholy one, it cannot fail to be also instructive. Let us gather from to-day's the more pleasing inference, that it is in the power of individual goodness to arrest, if not avert, the temporal judgments of God. It is said in the

strong, but figurative language of Scripture, that the "Lord could do nothing against Sodom till righteous Lot" was in safety; and here we see that the evil decreed against Judah and Jerusalem remained suspended, till the eyes of Josiah should be closed in peace.

281

MORNING THIRTIETH.

LESSON.-2 Kings, Chapters xxiv. and xxv.

MAMA. My dear Mary, is not your young heart saddened by the narrative you have just been reading of the desolation of Judah, filling up, as it were, the measure of the calamities of Israel, and fulfilling to the letter the language of Isaiah to Ahaz: "The land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings!" Is it not melancholy to see the destinies of nations, once so highly favoured by God, brought, through their own iniquities, to an untimely end, like a "tale that is told?" In whose reign did this fearful consummation take place?

MARY. Partly in Jehoiakim's.

MAMA. And who was he? You must look for his parentage in the end of the former chapter. MARY. One of Josiah's sons, whose name Pharaoh king of Egypt changed, when he set him up in the room of his brother Jehoahaz.