task; but the people who follow their lead are not free from guilt,
though they can plead that they only followed. The second count in the
indictment is the refusal of king and people to listen to God's
remonstrances. 2 Kings, chap, xxi., gives the prophets' warnings at
greater length. 'They would not hearken'--can anything madder and
sadder be said of any of us than that? Is it not the very sin of sins,
and the climax of suicidal folly, that God should call and men stop
their ears? And yet how many of us pay no more regard to His voice, in
His providences, in our own consciences, in history, in Scripture,
and, most penetrating and beseeching of all, in Christ, than to idle
wind whistling through an archway! Our own evil deeds stop our ears,
and the stopped ears make further evil deeds more easy.

The second step in this typical story is merciful chastisement, meant
to secure a hearing for God's voice. 2 Kings tells the threat, but not
the fulfilment; Chronicles tells the fulfilment, but not the threat.
We note how emphatically God's hand is recognised behind the political
complications which brought the Assyrians to Jerusalem, and how
particularly it is stated that the invasion was not headed by
Esarhaddon, but by his generals. The place of Manasseh's captivity
also is specified, not as Nineveh, as might have been expected, but as
Babylon. These details, especially the last, look like genuine
history. It is history which carries a lesson. Here is one conspicuous
instance of the divine method, which is working to-day as it did then.
God's hand is behind the secondary causes of events. Our sorrows and
'misfortunes' are sent to us by Him, not hurled at us by human hands
only, or occurring by the working of impersonal laws. They are meant
to make us bethink ourselves, and drop evil things from our hands and
hearts. It is best to be guided by His eye, and not need 'bit and
bridle'; but if we make ourselves stubborn as 'the mule, which has no