moribund Christianity.

II. The next point here is the effect of the rediscovered Law. Shaphan
was closely connected with Josiah, as his office made him a confidant.
It is ordinarily taken for granted that he and the other persons named
in this lesson formed a little knot of earnest Jehovah worshippers,
fully sympathising with the Reformation, and that among them lay the
authorship of the book. But we know nothing about them except what is
told here and in the parallel in Kings. One of them, Ahikam, was a
friend and protector of Jeremiah, and Shaphan the scribe was the
father of another of Jeremiah's friends. They may all have been in
accord with the king, or they may not.

At all events, Shaphan took the book to Josiah. We can picture the
scene--the deepening awe of both men as the whole extent of the
nation's departure from God became clearer and clearer, the tremulous
tones of the reader, and the silent, fixed attention of the listener
as the solemn threatenings came from Shaphan's reluctant, pallid lips.
There was enough in them to touch a harder heart than Josiah's. We
cannot suppose that, knowing the history of the past, and being
sufficiently enlightened to 'seek after the God of David his father,'
he did not know in a general way that sin meant sorrow, and national
disobedience national death. But we all have the faculty of blunting
the cutting edge of truth, especially if it has been familiar, so that
some novelty in the manner of its presentation, or even its repetition
without novelty sometimes, may turn commonplace and impotent truth
into a mighty instrument to shake and melt.

So it seems to have been with Josiah. Whether new or old, the Word
found him as it had never done before. The venerable copy from which