A MEMORABLE YEAR
‘The eighteenth year of king Josiah.’
Josiah mounted the throne when he was eight years old. He was the son of Amon and the grandson of Manasseh, both of them evil rulers who had forgotten God. It is therefore all the more surprising and delightful to light on the tender heart of this young king. It was to Jedidah that he owed everything, under God. Where Boscath (her ancestral city) stood, we do not know. It was a town somewhere near the Philistine border. But it is not there that we must seek her monument. It is in the character and work of King Josiah.
I. Josiah had given his heart to God.—He had sought God early, and according to His promise had found Him. His religion began in the home of his own soul, but a religion that begins there, cannot stop there. Josiah looked out on the people God had given him. His father’s lineaments seemed stamped upon them. They called themselves the servants of Jehovah, yet how corrupt and how debased they were! Men were still worshipping the host of heaven. Fathers were offering their children to the fire-god. Altars still smoked with sacrifices to Baal. Idolatrous things still stood in the Temple Court. Josiah had a mighty task before him. He had cleansed his heart—could he ever cleanse his land? I think it shows the earnestness of the king that he began resolutely with what was in his power. If he could not call his people back to God, at least he could repair the House of God. The Temple had fallen into sad disrepair since Joash had renewed it two hundred years ago. So Josiah set to work upon the Temple. Let him begin there, and greater things will follow. We find him paying the carpenters and masons, and God was to pay him back a thousandfold. Do we not need to learn that lesson still? Are we not often tempted to do nothing, simply because there is so much to do? Josiah teaches us that the road to victory begins in doing what we can do, to-day. As Newman sings—
When obstacles and trials seem
Like prison-walls to be,
I do the little I can do,
And leave the rest to Thee.
Josiah could at least employ the carpenters, and the covenant was nearer than he thought.
II. What was it that made reformation possible?—What was it that breathed a new spirit through the land, and brought the people back to God again? It was the discovery by the high priest Hilkiah of an old volume in the House of God. Hilkiah had his heart in the right place; he was eagerly seconding Josiah’s efforts, and he too, like Josiah, doing what he could, did a great deal more than he had ever dreamed of. Can you not picture him busy in the Temple, helping to clear out the dusty rooms? Can you not see him, in some neglected corner, lighting upon that old and discoloured parchment? He opened it with a scholar’s curiosity. In that moment he forgot all his cleaning work. I don’t think a man’s heart ever throbbed so violently at the chance discovery of some rare old tome as did Hilkiah’s in that memorable hour. He had discovered the lost law-book of Jehovah. It was in substance our Book of Deuteronomy. It was the voice of Jehovah speaking to the age. It was the very message that the times required. The land might mock at Jeremiah’s threatenings; but here was a message that would convince the stubbornest.
III. The book was found, then, and passed on to the king.—Shaphan the scribe read it before the throne. And as Josiah listened to its awful judgments, hurled at the sin with which his land was seething, a great fear seized upon his kingly heart. Was there no hope? Might not God stay His anger? It might be well to consult the prophets about that. But the case was urgent, and Jeremiah was not living in the city; was there no interpreter of God within the walls? The thoughts of the council turn at once to Huldah, an aged saint who dwelt in the lower town. How men would stare, and how the women would talk as the embassy went hurrying through the streets! How many a worshipper at the street-corner shrines would have his hand arrested as the envoys passed! Something had happened. The city grew apprehensive. Uneasy consciences are quick to take alarm. Then the trumpet sounded a rally to the Temple. The people crowded up the slope at its summons. There stood the king, touched by a greater Presence. In his hand was the book that had been found. He read it all to them, with what passion you may guess. There and then he made a covenant with God. And the people, struck by a common fear, moved by a common impulse, feeling the majesty and jealous love of God as they had never felt it in their lives before, turned from their sin to serve their great Deliverer, and entered into covenant with Him.
Illustrations
(1) ‘John Newton was very wild and wicked when he was young. But his mother also was Jedidah—“beloved,” and when he became a Christian he used to say this. He used to say, “Even when I was very wild, I could never forget my mother’s soft hand. When going to do something wicked, I could always feel her soft hand on my head. If thousands of miles away from her, I could not forget that.” Without question it was so with young Josiah.’
(2) ‘A Bible found in the monastery of Erfurt had an incalculable influence on Luther. A pedlar’s tract, brought to his father’s door, was the means of the conversion of Richard Baxter. The accidental discovery of a little volume on an old soldier’s window-head at Simprin gave new spiritual life to Thomas Boston, and through Boston to thousands over Scotland. Surely (as Wordsworth writes in the “Excursion”) God is
A Being
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.’