- ism, and makes it ever ready to add new members to its pantheon
without discarding old favorites. So far as there was a national worship carried on by a national priesthood, Jehovah must have been its object. But we are not therefore compelled to imagine that the nation had adopted Jehovism in so solemn and binding a manner as to render its abandonment a gross violation of their fundamental institutions. No doubt, according to the Scriptural writers, it was a deliberate breach of the orignal constitution to forsake, even for a moment, the exclusive service of the national god for that of any other deity whatsoever. But the supernatural origin assigned by them to this original constitution throws a doubt on their assertions, while the facts they report serve to increase it. For while we learn that Jehovah was deserted by one generation after another in favor of more popular rivals, much to the indignation of his priests and prophets, we do not perceive any traces of a consciousness on the part of the idolaters that they were guilty of infidelity to fundamental and unchangeable laws. They rather appear to have acted in mere levity, and the repeated objurgations of the Jehovistic party would tend to the conclusion that the people were not aware of any binding obligation to adhere to the worship of this deity to the exclusion of that of every other. The efforts of the Jehovists may indeed show that they believed such an obligation to exist: but not that their opponents were equally aware of it. Moreover, we are not without some more positive testimony which strongly favors this view of their mutual relations. Under the reign of the pious, and no doubt credulous, Josiah, a certain priest professed to have discovered a "book of the law" mysteriously hidden in the temple. Without discussing in this place what book this may have been, it is plain that it inculcated Jehovism under the penalty of curses similar to those found in Deuteronomy, and it is plain too that its contents caused the monarch a painful surprise, which expressed itself by his rending his clothes and sending a commission to "inquire of the Lord" "concerning the words of this book that is found." Now is it possible to suppose that the words of such a book as this could have inflicted on Josiah so great a shock, or have required the appointment of a special commission to inquire concerning them, if it had been a mat-
