A people raised from such depths would require a constitution, a new law to take the place of the old, from the day when the exile should cease.  Ezekiel would willingly have dispensed with the monarchy, as it had been tried since the time of Samuel with scarcely any good results.  For every Hezekiah or Josiah, how many kings of the type of Ahaz or Manasseh had there been!  The Jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to the house of David, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude it from his plan for their future government.  He resolved to tolerate a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the compiler of the Book of Deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servant of the servants of God, whose principal function should be to provide the means of worship.  Indeed, the Lord Himself was the only Sovereign whom the prophet fully accepted, though his concept of Him differed greatly from that of his predecessors:  from that, for instance, of Amos—­the Lord God who would do nothing without revealing “His secret unto His servants the prophets;” or of Hosea—­who desired “mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”  The Jahveh of Ezekiel no longer admitted any intercourse with the interpreters of His will.  He held “the son of man” at a distance, and would consent to communicate with him only by means of angels who were His messengers.  The love of His people was, indeed, acceptable to Him, but He preferred their reverence and fear, and the smell of the sacrifice offered according to the law was pleasing to His nostrils.  The first care of the returning exiles, therefore, would be to build Him a house upon the holy mountain.  Ezekiel called to mind the temple of Solomon, in which the far-off years of his youth were spent, and mentally rebuilt it on the same plan, but larger and more beautiful; first the outer court, then the inner court and its chambers, and lastly the sanctuary, the dimensions of which he calculates with scrupulous care:  “And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cubits on the other side:  and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits; and the breadth, twenty cubits”—­and so forth, with a wealth of technical details often difficult to be understood.  And as a building so well proportioned should be served by a priesthood worthy of it, the sons of Zadok only were to bear the sacerdotal office, for they alone had preserved their faith unshaken; the other Levites were to fill merely secondary posts, for not only had they shared in the sins of the nation, but they had shown a bad example in practising idolatry.  The duties and prerogatives of each one, the tithes and offerings, the sacrifices, the solemn festivals, the preparation of the feasts,—­all was foreseen and prearranged with scrupulous exactitude.  Ezekiel was, as we have seen, a priest; the smallest details were as dear to him as the noblest offices of his