which neither he nor his authorities understood, seems to me to be so weighty an argument for its authenticity, that it is impossible to reject the tradition until we have more decided grounds for so doing.

In order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for Egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its Tyrian policy.  Necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the Tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the Assyrians to the Chaldaeans.  He could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as among the Nabataeans and the Arabs of Kedar; but the key of the whole position lay with Judah—­that ally without whom none of Necho’s other partisans would venture to declare openly against their master.  The death of Josiah had dealt a fatal blow to the hopes of the prophets, and even long after the event they could not recall it without lamenting the fate of this king after their own heart.  “And like unto him,” exclaims their chronicler, “was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him."*

     * 2 Kings xxiii. 25.

The events which followed his violent death—­the deposition of Jehoahaz, the establishment and fall of the Egyptian supremacy, the proclamation of the Chaldaean suzerainty, the degradation of the king and the misery of the people brought about by the tribute exacted from them by their foreign masters,—­all these revolutions which had succeeded each other without break or respite had all but ruined the belief in the efficacy of the reform due to Hilkiah’s discovery, and preached by Jeremiah and his followers.  The people saw in these calamities the vengeance of Jahveh against the presumptuous faction which had overthrown His various sanctuaries and had attempted to confine His worship to a single temple; they therefore restored the banished attractions, and set themselves to sacrifice to strange gods with greater zest than ever.

A like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around Jehoiakim similar to those at the court of Ahaz and Hezekiah a century earlier.  The populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the Chaldaeans by earthly means, and since Necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with Egypt.  Jeremiah, on the contrary, and those who remained faithful to the teaching of the prophets, saw in all that was passing around them cogent reasons for rejecting worldly wisdom and advice, and for yielding themselves unreservedly to the Divine will in bowing