"The rest of the events in MANASSEH'S reign and
all his deeds, including the sins he committed, are recorded in The Book of
the History of the Kings of Judah. When Manasseh died, he was buried in the
palace garden, the garden of Uzza. Then his son Amon became the next king."
2 Kings 21:17-18, 2 Chron. 33:1-21.
Here is an unostentatious, an unhonored, an unepitaphed
grave! Though one of the kings of Judah, MANASSEH is laid, not in pomp and
splendor, amid the dust of his ancestors, but in a private tomb, in the
garden of his Jerusalem palace.
Striking is the contrast between these funeral rites of
Manasseh and those of his royal father Hezekiah. The funeral cortege and
burial of the latter was one of unprecedented splendor. "They buried
him," we read, "in the chief of the sepulchers of the sons of
David--and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem honored him at his
death." But however brief be the chronicle of Manasseh's departure and
funeral, however lowly or unregal the monument reared over his ashes, he is
himself a wondrous "monument"--a monument of Divine grace and mercy
and forgiveness. As we gather around his tomb, let us ponder the spiritual
epitaph for ourselves, which many have read through tears of guilt and
despair, thanking God and taking courage--"The chief of sinners, BUT I
obtained mercy!"
We have to trace, in his case, as described in the
motto-lines of the Christian poet, a "sunrise" of promise, soon obscured
with clouds of guilt and crime. These clouds burst in floods of penitence
and sorrow. A meridian of sudden brilliancy succeeds. The sky clears, and
the orb of a chequered life sets cloudless and serene on the hills of Judah.
Standing by his grave, under the shadow of Zion, let us take a retrospective
view of his strange history. He is the prodigal son of Old Testament
story. We have the departure from the hallowed parental home; the life
of alienation, misery, and sin, and his final restoration and return. In
other words, let us consider, in their order, these three points--Manasseh's
sin; his conversion; and his new life.
I. His career of SIN was a peculiarly sad one; and
all the more so, when we reflect that his infancy and boyhood were nurtured
under the training of the best and holiest of fathers. Hezekiah, when he
received the respite from sickness and expected death, was divinely apprized
that fifteen additional years would be added to his life; and it was three
years subsequent to this, that Manasseh was born. With the precise knowledge
which the good king of Judah thus possessed as to the assigned limit of
existence, (a knowledge given indeed to none else,) and knowing, moreover,
how susceptible youth is of lasting impressions, we may well imagine, as
year by year drew near when the crown would devolve on the head of his young
boy, how faithfully he would employ the brief allotted period in training
him for his great duties; educating him in that noblest of inheritances,
a father's piety and devout example. How zealously would he echo the
dying exhortation and benediction of his great progenitor, "And you, my
son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a perfect heart, and
with a willing mind--for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands all
the imaginations of the thoughts--if you seek him, he will be found by you;
but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever," (1 Chron. 28:9).
Above all, how would Hezekiah (man of special prayer as he was) baptize that
child's infancy and youth with these burning devotions?--these earnest
petitions, which, mightier than all his armies, had laid the proud chivalry
of Sennacherib low in the dust.
But ah! we are too truthfully, too painfully reminded, in
the case of Manasseh, that grace is not hereditary; that piety, despite
of the most devout and religious training, is not always transmitted from
father to son. To take an older illustration; Adam, with all the
recollections fresh on his memory of Eden lost, the galling bitterness of
forfeited bliss, would doubtless often and again rehearse in the ears of his
children the dark story of transgression. He would paint to them, as he
alone of all the human race could do, the unsullied beauties of
holiness, in order to scare them from that accursed thing which had entailed
upon himself so terrible a ruin! Yet what was his success? What effect had
these blinding tears of penitence and remorse, shed before his children at
the very gates of the lost paradise? His own first-born, despite of all,
turned out a murderer and a vagabond.
And here, in a later age, we have another child of
prayers and tears, scarce mounting the throne still fragrant with parental
piety, before he insults a parent's ashes, tramples on his counsels, mocks
his tears, and becomes a desperado in guilt. Altars to Baal and Ashtaroth
were erected within the Temple's sacred enclosures. The groves in the valley
of Jehoshaphat and on the slopes of the Mount of Olives were polluted with
defiled altars, on which incense rose to the host of heaven. Deep down in
the valley of Hinnom, behind his palace, he caused his own son to pass
through the fire, dedicating him a votary to bloodthirsty Moloch. With
servile credulity, while he rejected the God of his fathers, he listened to
lying oracles, and did homage to those who pretended communion with dead
spirits.
Proud, passionate, overbearing, he became the persecutor
and fanatic of his day. He poured out the blood of Jerusalem like water.
Innocent lives were sacrificed. Those who loved the God and the religion of
their fathers better than existence, were given over to massacre. Cruelty
and torture were added to death; and tradition has it, that good old Isaiah
was, at the savage command of the royal master whom he had too faithfully
reproved, ordered to be "sawn asunder." "He wrought much evil in the
sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger," (2 Chron. 33:6).
Nor was his guilt and ruin confined to himself. There is
a terrible contagion in moral evil. We read that "He made Judah
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to sin, and to do worse than the heathen
whom the Lord had destroyed before the children, of Israel," (2 Chron.
33:9). This tells the malignant influence his creed and example had on his
subjects--that he sowed the seeds of his own wickedness among the thousands
that owned his sway.
It is a dreadful and solemn thought, continually
recurring to us in these Bible characters, that individual influence assumes
greater and more responsible proportions according to position or scale in
society. The influence of mind upon mind, and especially of those in exalted
position, is truly gigantic--the magnetic power of moral attraction or
repulsion. It is often said that "the age makes the man." We believe that
the converse is oftener true, that "the man makes the age." At the close of
last century, in France and England, there was, in high places, a galaxy of
great and commanding intellect. In France, the infidelity of a few, gave the
first impulse to that wild wave of moral ruin which is chafing and eddying
there to this day. Simultaneously in England, a number of influential minds
appeared in prominent positions. They cast their talents and
influence as trophies at the foot of the cross. But while they themselves
are gone--long slumbering beneath the storied urns which a nation delighted
to rear over their honored ashes--the seed wafted from these Trees of
righteousness is this day springing up, in a forest of holy influences, to
the praise and the glory of God.
So it was with HEZEKIAH and Manasseh. In the case of the
former, how marvelous the influence for good. How his own faith and
piety were reflected in the hearts of his people. Look at that memorable
instance to which we have already incidentally referred, when Sennacherib
and his giant host came up against Jerusalem and the fenced cities of Judah.
It was enough to strike panic and dismay into the boldest and bravest. But
Hezekiah, undismayed, because he knew where his true strength lay, gathered
together his soldiers and captains of war in the open street, and thus
addressed them--"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged
because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him, for there is a
greater power with us than with him. With him is only the arm of flesh, but
with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles." And the
people gained confidence from what Hezekiah the king of Judah said. (2 Chron.
32:7-8)
See, on the other hand, in the case of MANASSEH, the
influence for evil; and that, also, long after he had mourned his sins,
with breaking heart, and sought repentance carefully and with tears. Yes, it
was an influence that survived his death, and bore bitter fruit after he
himself was laid in his grave, when his own son perpetuated the idolatries
of his father's earlier years; for we read, "Amon, his son, sacrificed
unto all the carved images which Manasseh his father had made, and served
them."
Let us never forget, each of us, our solemn individual
influence; an influence, also, not confined to place or time, but made up of
words and deeds that transmit their endless echoes and images from age to
age--giving us very life when we are dead--putting speech into our
ashes. After the stone is sunk in the quiet lake, and lying still in the
bottom, the waves generated by it, are being propelled in concentric
circlets to the shore. They are chafing and rippling on the pebbles, when
the disturbing cause has been for many minutes lost to sight, and buried in
unconscious rest in the underlying bed of sand or mud. When we are sunk in
our last long rest, lost from the sight and from the land of the
living,"gone down into silence"--the ripple of influence, for good or for
evil, will be heard murmuring on the shores of Time!
Note again, as an aggravation of Manasseh's sin, HIS
REPEATED AND OBDURATE REJECTION OF DIVINE WARNING. "The Lord spoke to
Manasseh and his people, but they would not hearken," (2 Chron. 33:10).
He may have spoken to him as He does to us, in varied
ways. He may have spoken to him by blessings. He may have sent His holy
prophets and seers to expostulate with him. He may have knocked at the door
of his seared conscience by the hallowed remembrances of a parent's piety,
and a youth of rare spiritual privilege. But it was all in vain. And now He
prepares the ROD for severer punishment. He makes ready the bow, and puts
the arrow on the string, to send the dart of deeper conviction home to his
heart! Let us here admire God's patience and forbearance with this guilty,
daring, aggravated apostate. He might have cut him down in a moment--He
might have commissioned the lightning from heaven, or the pangs of some
sudden disease, or the hand of righteous violence, to rid the nation of a
villain. He might have sent him out, like Ahab, in his chariot to battle;
and some bowman might have drawn his arrow at a venture, and sent him
reeling to a grave of despair! But, no! Manasseh's name is in the Book of
Life. He is one of God's chosen ones from before the foundation of the
world; that lost sheep must be brought home to the fold--that lost son must
be brought to the paternal halls. "O Israel, you have destroyed yourself,
but in me is your help found," (Hosea 13:9).
And how does God deal with this self-destroyer? What are
the means He employs to humble his hard heart, and evoke from the wretched
prodigal the cry, "I will arise, and go to my Father." He sends one
of the generals of Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria, against him and his
fenced cities. The panic-stricken monarch presents a painful and humiliating
contrast with the brave, bold heart of Hezekiah. The latter, when the same
hosts were encamped against him at his very gates, led his men up the temple
steps, singing, as they marched, his own sublime psalm, written for the
occasion--"God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of
trouble. So we will not fear, even if earthquakes come and the mountains
crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains
tremble as the waters surge!" (Ps. 46:1-3). His son, without,
perhaps, the shadow of resistance, flees humiliated from his palace, and
takes shelter in a thicket of thorns to elude the fury of the invader. But
the commissioners of the Divine vengeance track out his guilty footsteps. He
is loaded with chains, marched in ignominy to Babylon, and consigned there
to a dungeon-vault. What a comment on the striking parallel made by the wise
man--"The wicked flee when no man pursues; but the righteous are bold as
a lion!" (Prov. 28:1.)
II. Let us consider next, Manasseh's CONVERSION--the
great turning point in his history. That dungeon became to him as the gate
of heaven. His God, in a far higher than natural sense, "brought him out
of darkness and the shadow of death. He broke the gates of brass, and cut
the bars of iron in sunder," (Ps. 107:14, 16).
We are called to note here the power of sanctified
affliction.
There is a twofold effect of trial and adversity.
Sometimes it hardens the heart, leading a rebellious spirit to murmur and
repine under the hand that chastens, and to say, like Gideon, "If the
Lord is with us, why has all this befallen us?" or to utter the worse
infidel scoff, "Let me curse God, and die." But it has another
effect--the more blessed one, of humbling the rebellious spirit, bringing it
to consider its ways, bewail its sins, and, instead of kicking against the
pricks, to cry, "Lord, what would you have me to do?"
It was so with Manasseh. In that dungeon, God knocked at
the door of his obdurate heart. The prison in Babylon became his spiritual
birthplace. "Behold, he prays!" Knees that never bent before the God
of his fathers, since he knelt a child by his parents' side, are now bent on
that dungeon floor!
We can imagine his exercise of soul. How, in that solemn,
silent prison, the memory of years on years of past sin would rise up before
him. His father's prayers and saintly counsels--the innocent blood he shed
in Jerusalem--the terrible desecration of the holy place--the thousands he
had involved, by his guilty example, in apostasy and ruin! Oh, as the rush
of the past came on his lonely spirit, in the midnight hour, and the tears
of burning remorse and shame rolled down his cheeks, would not this
be his despairing thought--Can iniquities such as mine be pardoned? Can
there be forgiveness for such aggravated transgression--such unparalleled,
presumptuous sin?
Who knows but, as the vision of the holy prophet he had
slain rose up before him, adding a new scorpion sting to his agonized
conscience--who knows but at the same moment, balm-words of comfort which
that prophet had spoken may have fallen on his tossed soul like oil on the
troubled waters. Did they not seem to speak home to him, as if the
seer, in uttering them, had his own case of agonizing despair specially in
view--"Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord--though your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool," (Isa. 1:18). "Scarlet and crimson,"
indeed, his sins were. But he will take the God of his fathers, the God who
had borne with him so long and so patiently, at His word--"When he was in
affliction," we read, "he sought the Lord his God, and humbled
himself greatly before the God of his fathers," (2 Chron. 33:12). God
heard the voice of his groaning. A light, brighter than the sun, broke
through his prison bars. He could say with Jeremiah in his dungeon, "I
called upon your name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. You drew near in the
day that I called upon you. You said, Fear not!" (Lam. 3:55.)
Perhaps one of his bitterest and saddest thoughts may
have been that same terrible influence, already alluded to, which he had
exerted, in the past, over his subjects. This thought, in that moment of
penitence and illumination, may have been uppermost in his spirit, and
hardest to bear--"Oh, that I could undo that guilty past! Oh, that God would
spare me to recover strength, and bring me back again to my palace and
capital, that I might declare what He has done for my soul, and seek to
counteract these memories of blood-guiltiness and sin!" God did hear
him in this matter too; for "he prayed unto him--and he was entreated by
him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem, into
his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God," (2 Chron.
33:13). He left Jerusalem bound (soul and body) in fetters, after having
closed on himself and his people the temple-gates, and quenched the sacred
fire on his fathers' altars. Now he returns, the possessor of a nobler
liberty than he ever before enjoyed, saying, "Open unto me the gates of
righteousness; then will I enter into them and praise the Lord." "O Lord, I
am your servant; yes, I am your servant, the son of your handmaid, and you
have freed me from my bonds! I will offer you a sacrifice of thanksgiving
and call on the name of the Lord. I will keep my promises to the Lord in the
presence of all his people, in the house of the Lord, in the heart of
Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!" (Ps. 116:16-19).
Does not all this teach us, that God's grace can reach
any heart, in any place? The soul that despised God in the consecrated
ground of Canaan and Jerusalem, was reached in the heathen city, and in the
military prison in heathen Babylon. Prayer, also, needs no sacred places--no
high altar--no temple-court--no gorgeous cathedral to give it power and
efficacy. Wherever there is an earnest heart, there is a present God.
The prayer of Saul of Tarsus in heathen Damascus, or when tossed at midnight
on the sea of Adria, or when immured in the dungeons of Philippi; and the
prayer of Manasseh, here narrated, in this dungeon in Babylon--these,
and similar penitential cries of earnest, broken spirits are heard, when
many an imposing service and intoned liturgy dies away in empty echoes
within "consecrated walls!"
And mark what was the instrumental cause of Manasseh's
conversion. What was it that drove him to his knees, and led him to know God
as the hearer of prayer? It was "when he was in affliction he sought
the Lord his God, and humbled himself." It is Manasseh, "taken among the
thorns, and bound with fetters," who stands before us a new man!
And is not affliction still God's own angel-messenger?
Does not He still drive His own people amid the thorny thickets of severe
trial, hurl them from their thrones of prosperity, and immure them "in
darkness and in the deeps"--just that He may dash to pieces all their
earthly confidences, break their hard, stubborn hearts, send them to their
knees, and save their souls?
Ah, how many can tell, "But for these
thorn-thickets, these fetters of trial, I would still have been an enemy to
my God, plunging into greater and greater sin? But I may well take these
thorns and chains together, and weave them into a garland of triumph." It is
said that the mother eagle inserts a thorn in the nest, to drive her young
brood to the wing. God puts many a thorn in His people's downy nest of ease
and worldly prosperity, to urge them to rise heavenward. If Manasseh had not
known the thorns, the fetters, and the dark prison, in all human
probability, he would have lived and died an idolater. If Moab had not been
"emptied from vessel to vessel" he would have "settled on his lees." If many
of the redeemed, spoken of in Revelation, had not "come out of great
tribulation" they would not have been in their white robes "before the
throne!"
III. Let us now proceed to consider Manasseh's NEW
LIFE.
The grand test of the reality of conversion, is the
regenerated being. The tree is known by its fruits. The purified
fountain is known by its streams. With many, alas! returning prosperity only
hardens the heart, causing it to lapse into its old state of callous
indifference.
It might have been so with Manasseh when the
dungeon-vault was left, and when, under a royal escort, he was once more
conducted back to his palace and crown. He might have basely spurned the
hand that rescued him, and relapsed into his old courses. But he stood the
test. We read that it was WHEN God had brought him again to Jerusalem into
his kingdom, "THEN Manasseh knew that the Lord was God."
It must have been a noble sight, to see him, in the face
of his whole people, not only manifesting the saving change in his own heart
and life, but as all true religion is expansive, and seeks the good of
others, commencing at once religious and civil, ecclesiastical and
political, reform. He began by cutting down, root and branch, all his old
abominations. The statues of Ashtaroth--the heathen groves, the defiled
altars--all are swept away. Nor was it a mere external reformation--a mere
negative religion--the "ceasing to do evil." But he taught himself, and he
taught his people, "to do well." "He repaired the altar of the Lord, and
sacrificed thereon peace-offerings and thank-offerings." Offerings for
sin, and offerings of gratitude for mercies. He became himself a preacher of
righteousness. It was a great revival in Judah. "He stood by the altar, and"
we read, "commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel." He evidently
returned in the spirit of Zaccheus the publican, resolved to "restore
fourfold;" saying, "What shall I render unto the Lord for all His
benefits toward me?"
Strange but joyous sight to the true Israel of God in
Jerusalem--those who for years had wept in secret over their monarch's sins,
and over "the holy and beautiful house where their fathers worshiped"--to
behold now the long-smouldering ashes again kindled on the altar for the
morning and evening sacrifice--the king's own voice joining in the solemn
hymn, "Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy
endures forever."
Add to all this, and as a proof that worldly wisdom and
prudence, in the best sense of the word, go hand in hand with true piety, he
set himself with equal vigor to the strengthening of his kingdom. He raised
a wall on the defenseless side of his capital, besides augmenting the
strongholds of his fenced cities. He was more a king than ever. All his
praying, and praising, and temple-worship, had made him no fatalist, no
presumptuous dreamer. It was no creed of his--"God will save us; we need not
trouble ourselves about defense or munitions--walls or standing armies,
horses or chariots, the Lord will fight our battles!" No! his piety served
only to invigorate his patriotism. He acted out the truth of that grand
apostolic maxim, "Not lacking in zeal, fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord."
True piety does not require us to sink into sentimental
devotion--a dreamy life of inaction or enthusiasm, but to interfuse all
worldly work with religion--to let life's duties be saturated with the fear
of God--erecting our churches, yet building our dockyards--rearing our
altars, yet casting our cannon--letting the white wings of commerce be
studding our seas, and bringing back laden stores from distant continents,
yet sending, at the same time, to heaven the winged vessels of
prayer--waiting in faith for their return, laden with costlier
merchandise--taking religion and incorporating it with daily life, letting
it regulate our transactions behind the counter, in the exchange, in the
family, in the world, and proving to all the truth of that noble
aphorism--"A Christian is the highest style of man."
We may conclude this chapter with a word of warning,
and a word of encouragement.
The word of WARNING may be read from the
consequences of Manasseh's guilt–
He was a penitent, a sincere penitent. His aggravated
sins were all pardoned and forgiven, and he afterwards lived and died, a
true "Hebrew of the Hebrews," an "heir of promise." But the deadly influence
of his early life of sin, was not so easily obliterated. We have already
casually alluded to the fact, and return to it once more. If you read the
sequel to his brief history, you will find that with all his efforts and
zeal, he could only at best effect a partial reformation. He found that
personal repentance was an easier thing than national; that it was easier
far, in the earlier part of his reign, to undo the effect of his father's
virtues, than in the latter part, to undo his own crimes. "Nevertheless,"
we read, "the people still sacrificed in the high places." Ah!
how it would embitter his closing days to see, here and there, polluted
incense still rising from unhallowed groves and altars, and the trumpet of
vengeance sounding its retributive note in his ear--"Be sure your sin
will find you out!"
Even in his own private funeral rites and secluded tomb,
we can see a fruit of his early sin. By his reformation, and return to the
worship of his father's God, he had alienated the companions of his guilt
and the abettors of his idolatrous practices. Those, on the other hand, who
gladly hailed his change of mind, would be slow, as is generally the case,
to credit the reality; and even if certified of this, they could never
heartily forgive, or at least forget, the murderer of their fathers or
mothers or children. Dying, therefore, though he did, a believer--a true
child of Abraham--many tears did not follow him to the grave, nor did
willing hands rear a monument to his memory; moreover, he himself, painfully
aware how his inconsistent former life had compromised him in the eyes of
his people, might forbid the funeral pomp usually accompanying royal
burials. With no pretended humility, he had probably, as the shedder of the
blood of God's prophets, pronounced his ashes unworthy to mix with that of
his nobler ancestry, and on his death-bed given instructions that his
interment might take place within the precincts of his own garden.
Reader, beware of sin. Think of the bitter consequences
it entails, how by unholy acts or inconsistent deeds, influence is lessened
or character lost. Avoid debatable ground. Keep off from what is likely to
compromise you. Remember righteous Lot. He made little after all of the rich
plains of Sodom and its luxurious capital. Men pointed at him with the
finger of scorn. Dark stains blotted the close of his life. Even in the case
of Manasseh, with a nobler and more consistent termination to existence
(many years, as we may surmise, of devotedness to the God of Israel), yet it
was easier for men to remember Manasseh the infidel, the scoffer, the
profligate, the persecutor, the reckless prodigal--than Manasseh the
converted, the royal penitent, the prodigal restored, the wondrous monument
of divine grace and mercy!
But we have also, as we watch this singular "sunset," a
lesson of ENCOURAGEMENT–
We have a glorious testimony, in the case of Manasseh,
that no sinner need despair. Manasseh is now stooping over the walls of
heaven, in company with Saul the blasphemer, Zaccheus the extortioner, the
Magdalene of the Pharisee's house, the dying felon of Calvary, and
proclaiming that, for the vilest sinner, there is mercy. Yes, although this
man had defied his God; had scorned pious counsels; had added bloodshed and
cruelty to rampant unbelief and lawless lust; yet when the blast of God's
trumpet sounded over the apparently impregnable citadel of his heart, it
fell to the dust; and from that hour, in which grace triumphed, its walls
became "salvation and its gates praise."
And that grace which saved Manasseh, can save every one
of us--the poorest, the vilest, the most desponding.
Is there one such whose eye traces these pages--some one
whose whole past life is one sad foul retrospect--a story of aggravated
guilt and impiety--a father's counsels, a mother's prayers, mocked and
scorned--deep, dark stains blotting every page of conscience and memory?
Have God's bowmen of conviction found you in the thorns? Have they dragged
you to some dungeon of despair, and left you, amid the darkness of its
rayless vaults, to brood over impending death? Oh! send up your cry for
mercy to Manasseh's God. HE will not scorn you. No; though you have scorned
Him, scorned His people, scorned His mercies, scorned His
afflictions, scorned His providence, scorned His ministers, yet He will not
scorn you. "He will regard the cry of the destitute, and will not despise
their prayer." This story of Manasseh has been "written for the
generations to come, that the people who shall be created may praise the
Lord," (Ps. 102:18).
And is there no special encouragement here to Christian
parents? We have alluded, more than once, to Manasseh scorning his father's
piety and prayers. We have spoken of good Hezekiah, as his end approached,
imbuing that young heart with these prayers, pouring on that young kingly
brow this best anointing oil. Alas! is it another case on which to found the
sneer of the infidel?--"What need is there of prayer? Here is another
testimony that the prayer of pious lips ascends in vain. Hezekiah prays. But
the heavens are as brass and the earth as iron. The Lord has 'not heard,'
the 'God of Jacob has not regarded.' This child of prayer grows up a daring
and defiant unbeliever. 'Is there a God on the earth?'"
No, O man; who are you that replies against God?
Hezekiah's prayer is heard. His cries have not entered in vain into the ears
of the God of Sabbath. "The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at
the end it shall speak, and shall not lie--though it tarry, wait for it;
because it will surely come, it will not tarry," (Hab. 2:3). Years upon
years--half a lifetime--had elapsed--since the arrow of prayer had sped from
Hezekiah's bow. But when the good old king is sleeping his deep sleep, in
the regal sepulcher on Zion, lo! in yonder far-off dungeon, washed by the
tide of the distant Euphrates, the arrow has reached its mark; the word of
the Lord is tried--"Cast your bread upon the waters, and you SHALL find
it after many days." (Eccles. 11:1).