Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

I.-HEZEKIAH.

HEZEKIAH is a king whose history is brought before us by our Church on

two week-days, and no less than three Sundays in the year. Some persons perhaps are familiar only with those facts about him which are mentioned in the Sunday lessons, but there are more to be found in the Book of Chronicles, and his history is interwoven with the prophecies of Isaiah.

King Ahaz his father had gone extraordinary lengths in idolatry, he had "made molten images for Baalim," and had “burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel." The more he was chastened for these sins, the more did he trespass against the Lord, "for

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he sacrificed unto the gods of Damascus which smote him," he erected an idolatrous altar in the courts of the Temple, and at last "shut up the doors of the house of the Lord," "embittered by God's chastisements."

Great was God's faithful love to the nation in general, and the family of David in particular, that He raised up a pious successor to such a king as Ahaz. Seldom, even in Christian countries, are those pious who are born in the purple and inherit kingdoms; and if even with us young princes are surrounded with temptations, how much more unfavourable to virtue must have been the atmosphere of an Oriental harem in those miserable days.

We know not whether any good influences reached Hezekiah from other quarters, or whether his conversion is to be wholly attributed to the preaching of a prophet.

"Micah renewed under Hezekiah the prophecy of the utter destruction of Jerusalem, which he had pronounced under Jotham. Often, during those perhaps thirty years, he had repeated them in vain. At the last, they wrought a great repentance,

and delayed, it may be for 136 years, the destruction which he was constrained to foretell. Early in the days of Jehoiakim, about 120 years afterwards, in the public assembly when Jeremiah was on trial for his life, the elders of the land said explicitly, that the great conversion at the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah, nay, of that king himself, was wrought by the teaching of Micah a. 'Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying, Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to allthe people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest. Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them?" "

a Jer. xxvi. 17-19.

Dr. Pusey, Introduction to Micah.

However much Hezekiah owed to Micah, the influence of the still greater prophet Isaiah, who was of his kindred, was more sustained, for Micah seems to have died in the early part of his reign, and Isaiah to have lived on past its close. Very beautiful has sometimes been the connection between a pious prince and his religious adviser; thus David had Nathan, Josiah had Jeremiah, and Hezekiah Isaiah.

Whatever may have been the human instruments used in moulding his character, Hezekiah's name must ever be connected with one of the great revivals of religion, those great national reformations, or attempts at reformation, which are recorded for the imitation of posterity and the encouragement of all who would recall nations to the first principles on which their happiness is based. Doubtless it required great courage to battle with the abuses of his times. He stands forth as, of all princes, the most determined destroyer of idolatry. Evils, which one after another of even pious kings had spared, he attacked; the high places which, it might be alleged, even a

David and a Jehoshaphat had allowed, he demolished; nay, so thorough was his onset on superstition, that even the brasen serpent was broken in pieces by him, though it had been framed at the express command of God, had been blessed to the healing of so many, had been so long preserved, and, if rightly used, was so valuable as evidence, so venerable, so edifying as a relic. What strength of conviction, what fervent zeal did not this shew!

The Divine mercy in bestowing such a king at that crisis was the more opportune from the circumstances of the Hebrew race at that time. In those days the iniquity of the ten tribes was consummated, retribution came upon Samaria, and the chief part of Israel was removed beyond the Euphrates. At that hour, perhaps the darkest which the children of Abraham had known since the Exodus, God was pleased to raise up Hezekiah, to reform not only the kingdom of Judah and revive religion in Jerusalem, but to reclaim to the God of their fathers the remnant also of Israel. Though we speak of the captivity of the ten tribes, and