Josiah’s life ended in terrible disaster. He persisted in measuring himself in battle against the kine of Egypt in a quarrel which was none of his, and thus met his death. The events of this paragraph are fully narrated in 2 Chron. 35, and are corroborated by the Greek historian, Herodotus, and by the sculptures on this Pharaoh’s tomb. The story of Jehoiakim should also be studied in the pages of Jeremiah, chapters 22, 26, 36, which cast a flood of light on these last days, when the sands in the time-glass of repentance were running out.

Tt is extraordinary that, notwithstanding the earnest expostulations of Jeremiah and others, and the awful example furnished by the fate of the ten tribes, the kings of Judah and their people should be so persistent in wrong-doing. But their hearts were fully set upon

evil. In our own time the history of the drink traffic furnishes a parallel. Its evils stand confessed, as they touch individuals and nations, and yet neither individuals nor nations seem able to east off the coils of this serpent. The Hebrew race had to pass through terrible fires to become fitted for their mission to the world, and surely the present anguish of conflict is our parallel!