the licentious abominations of the neighbouring peoples. Hezekiah had
cultivated and encouraged prophecy, and gathered about him great and
noble souls like Isaiah and Habakkuk. Manasseh drove them from his
presence, and finally slew them.

There were new lights in those days, as there are now. Men who sneered
at all the old thoughts and ways, who swept Moses aside with disdain,
and thought that David's psalms were poor and feeble things, and that
the old-fashioned religion was narrow and provincial, and that the
stories of victories won by faith and miracles wrought by prayer were
worn-out fictions. They said that if the nation would prosper, it must
turn its back on all this stuff, and follow new methods, and profess a
new religion. Let them make the great empire, Babylon, their model,
with its advanced civilisation, and science, and literature, and vast
stores of wealth, with its worship, too, of the sun, and stars, and
fire, its religion full of jollity and license, which contrasted so
happily with the sober and severe worship of Jehovah, and did not
trouble men with unwelcome moral precepts. See how great that empire
had become, and how stationary and unprogressive was their own little
kingdom, because it clung to the old ways. That was what the new party
said. Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned
trusts and beliefs and worship. We are wiser than our simple-minded
fathers. We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy
prophets. We will have all things new.

And Manasseh, being a young man and as foolish as he was young, drank
in greedily their counsels and made himself their leader. For it is
ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's
wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and
the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all