and the restoration to the kingdom. 'He was entreated of him.' No
doubt, political circumstances brought about Manasseh's reinstatement,
as they had brought about his captivity, but it was God that 'brought
him again to his kingdom.' We may not receive again lost good things,
but we may be quite sure that God never fails to hear the cry of the
humble, and that, if there is one voice that more surely reaches His
ear and moves His heart than another, it is the voice of His chastened
children, who cry to Him out of the depths, and there have learned
their own sin and sore need. He will be entreated of them, and,
whether He gives back lost good or not, He will give Himself, in whom
all good is comprehended. Manasseh's experience may be repeated in us.

And the best part of it was, not that he received back his kingdom,
but that 'then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God.' The name had
been but a name to him, but now it had become a reality. Our
traditional, second-hand belief in God is superficial and largely
unreal till it is deepened and vivified by experience. If we have
cried to Him, and been lightened, then we have a ground of conviction
that cannot be shaken. Formerly we could at most say, 'I believe in
God,' or, 'I think there is a God,' but now we can say, 'I know,' and
no criticism nor contradiction can shake that. Such knowledge is not
the knowledge won by the understanding alone, but it is acquaintance
with a living Person, like the knowledge which loving souls have of
each other; and he who has that knowledge as the issue of his own
experience may smile at doubts and questionings, and say with the
Apostle of Love, 'We know that we are of God, ... and we know that the
Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may
know Him that is true.' Then, if we have that knowledge, we shall
listen to the same Apostle's commandment, 'Keep yourselves from
idols,' even as the issue of Manasseh's knowledge of God was that 'he