are always getting passed by; and the religious doctrines and ceremonies
of a rude age cannot satisfy the people of an enlightened age, any more
than the wigwams of the Pequod Indians in 1656 would satisfy the white
gentlemen and ladies of Boston and Worcester in 1856. The same thing
happens with the clothes, the tools, and the laws of all advancing
nations. The human race is at school, and learns through one book after
another,--going up to higher and higher studies continually. But at that
time cultivated men had outgrown their old forms of religion,--much of
the doctrine, many of the ceremonies; and yet they did not quite dare to
break away from them,--at least in public. So there was a great deal of
pretended belief, and of secret denial of the popular form of religion.
The best and most religious men, it seems likely, were those who
had least faith in what was preached and practised as the authorized
religion of the land.

In the time of David, many years before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew
nation had been very powerful and prosperous; afterwards there followed
long periods of trouble and of war, civil and domestic; the union of the
tribes was dissolved, and many calamities befell the people. In their
times of trouble, religious men said, "God will raise us up a GREAT KING
like DAVID, to defend and deliver us from our enemies. He will set
all things right." For the Hebrews looked on David as the Americans
on WASHINGTON, calling him a "man after God's own heart,"--that is,
thinking him "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts
of his countrymen." Sometimes they called this expected Deliverer, the
MESSIAH, that is the ANOINTED ONE,--a term often applied to a king or
other great man. Sometimes it was thought this or that special man, a
king, or general, would be the Messiah, and deliver the nation from its
trouble. Thus, it seems, that once it was declared that King HEZEKIAH
would perform this duty; and indeed CRYUS, a foreigner, a king of