This noble story, which we read in Church every year, seems to have had a great hold on the minds of the Jews.  They plainly thought it a very important story.  For it is told three times over in the Bible:  first in the Book of Kings, then in the Book of Chronicles, and again in that of the Prophet Isaiah.  Indeed, many chapters of Isaiah’s prophecies speak altogether of this invasion of the Assyrians and their destruction.  But what has this story to do with us, you may ask?  There are no miracles in our day.  We can expect no angels to fight for our armies.  We must fight for ourselves.

True, my friends:  but the lesson of these old stories, the moral of them stands good for ever.  And I am thankful that this very story is appointed to be read publicly in church once a year, to put us in mind of many things, which all men are too apt to forget.

For instance:  to learn one lesson out of many which this chapter may teach us.  We are too apt to think that peace and prosperity are the only signs of God’s favour.  That if a nation be religious, it is certain to thrive and be happy.  But it is not so.  We find from history that the times in which nations have shewn most nobleness, most courage, most righteousness, most faith in God, have been times of trouble, and danger, and terror.  When nations have been invaded, persecuted, trampled under foot by tyrants, then all the good which was in them has again and again shewed itself.  Then to the astonishment of the world they have become greater than themselves, and done deeds which win them glory for ever.  Then they are truly purged in the fire of affliction, that whatever dross and trash is in their hearts may be burnt out, and the pure gold left.

So it was with the Jews in Hezekiah’s time.  So again in the time of the Maccabees.  So with the old Greeks, when the great Kings of Persia tried to enslave them.  So with the old Romans, when the Carthaginians set upon them.  So it was with us English, three hundred years ago, when for a time the whole world seemed against us, because we alone were standing up for the Gospel and the Bible against the Pope of Rome.  Then the king of Spain, who was then as terrible a conqueror and devourer of nations, as the Assyrians of old, sent against us the Great Armada.  Then was England in greater danger than she had ever been before, or has been since.

And what came of it?  That that dreadful danger brought out more faith, more courage, than perhaps has ever been among us since.  That when we seemed weakest we were strongest.  That while all the nations of Europe were looking on to see us devoured up by those Spaniards, our laws and liberties taken from us, the Popish Inquisition set up in England, and England made a Spanish province, what they did see was, the people of this little island rising as one man, to fight for themselves on earth, while the tempests of God fought for them from heaven; and all that mighty fleet of the King of Spain routed and scattered, till not one man in a hundred ever saw their native country again.