command, a book which, while recapitulating some events in the ancient history of Israel, should represent those events in a light favorable to their designs, they could hardly have chosen a better moment for the execution of such a scheme. That they actually did this, it would be going beyond the evidence in our possession to assert, It may be that the book was an old one; and in any case, it is unnecessary to suppose that it was an original composition of Hilkiah's, palmed off upon the king as ancient. All that appears to me clearly to follow from the terms of the narrative is, that the law which this book contained (evidently the law of Jehovah) had not hitherto been regarded as the established law of the country, and that the production of this volume, in which its claims to that dignity were emphatically asserted, and its violation represented as entailing the most grevious curses, was one of the plans taken by the priestly party to procure for it the recognition of that supremacy which they declared it had actually enjoyed in the days of their forefathers. But although the history of Israel has been written by adherents of this party, and we are unfortunately precluded from checking their statements by any document recounting the same events from the point of view of their opponents, their records, biased as they are, clearly show us a nation whose favorite and ordinary creed was not monotheism; which was ever ready to adopt with fervor the idolatrous practices of its neighbors; and which was not converted to pure and exclusive monotheism till after the terrible lesson of the Captivity in Babylon.
This great event was turned to excellent account by the priests and prophets of Jehovah. Instead of regarding it as a natural consequence of the political relations of Judea with more powerful empires, they represented it as the fulfillment of the penalties threatened by Jehovah for infidelity towards himself. And as this view offered a plausible explanation of their unparalleled misfortunes, it was naturally accepted by many as the true solution of sufferings so difficult to reconcile with the protection supposed to be accorded by their national god. Under these circumstances a double process went on during their compulsory residence in heathendom. Great numbers, who were either not Jehovists, or whose Jehovism was but lukewarm,
