to the existing roll of the Tetrateuch, would be almost certain, we may well believe, to have first revised the work of the older writers which had come into his hands, and to have inserted passages, here and there, if he saw any reason for so doing, in the original document. The wonder, we repeat, would be, if he did not do this..

For the present, however, it is unnecessary to point out and investigate these passages, which will come more properly under consideration hereafter. It will be sufficient to have drawn attention here to the fact of their existence.

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CHAPTER III.

THE BOOK OF THE LAW FOUND IN THE TEMPLE.

567. IN 2K.xxii,xxiii, we find an account of the following · remarkable occurrence.

...

'In the eighteenth year of king Josiah, the king sent Shaphan the scribe to the House of Jehovah, saying, Go up to Hilkiah the High Priest, that he may sum the silver which is brought into the House of Jehovah, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people. And Hilkiah the Priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the Book of the Law in the House of Jehovah. And Hilkiah gave the Book to Shaphan, and he read it. . . . And Shaphan the scribe shewed the king, saying, Hilkiah the Priest hath delivered me a Book. And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the Priest, &c. saying, Go ye, enquire of Jehovah for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this Book that is found; for great is the wrath of Jehovah that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this Book, to do according to all that which is written concerning us. . . . And the king sent, and they gathered unto him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem. And the king went up into the House of Jehovah, and all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him, and the Priests, and the Prophets, and all the people, both small and great; and he read in their ears all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which was found in the House of Jehovah. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before Jehovah, to walk after Jehovah, and to keep His commandments, and His testimonies, and His statutes, with all their heart and with all their soul, to perform the words of this Covenant that were written in this Book. And all the people stood to the Covenant.'

568. If we met with the above narrative in any other book than the Bible, we should certainly feel it necessary to examine more closely into the statement, and see what this occurrence really means, by which the young king was influenced to take in

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hand so strenuously the Reformation of Religion throughout the land. The High-Priest 'finds' this Book of the Law in the Temple. If it really had been written by Moses, where, we must ask, had it been lying all this while, during more than eight centuries? It could not have been lying in the Ark itself; for then Hilkiah would not have found' it, as he dared not look into the Ark: and, besides, we are expressly told that there was nothing in the Ark save the the two tables of stone,' 1K.viii.9. Nor could it have been lying for those eight centuries outside the ark. For then, surely, it would have been named among the things, that were brought into the Temple by Solomon; and, at all events, it would have been well-known to David and Solomon and other pious kings, as well as to the successive High Priests, and we should not find them so regardless of so many of its plain precepts, as the history shows them to have been, e.g. with respect to the worshipping on high places, and the neglect of the due observance of the Passover.

569. When, further, we consider that in this same book of Deuteronomy is found also the command, said to have been given by Moses to the Levites, xxxi.26,—

'take this Book of the Law, and put it beside (7, E.V. 'in the side of,' but see R.ii.14, ‘she sat beside the reapers,' 1S.vi.8, ‘in a coffer by the side thereof,' &c.) the Ark of the Covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee,'

it is scarcely possible to resist the suspicion that the writing of the Book, the placing it, and the finding it, were pretty nearly contemporaneous events; and that, if there was no king before Josiah,'-—not David, in his best days, nor Solomon, in his early youth, not Asa, nor Jehoshaphat, nor Hezekiah, that turned to Jehovah with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses,' 2.K.xxiii.25, —it must have been because there was no king before him who had ever seen this portion, at least, of the Pentateuch, or had believed that such portions, as had come into his hands, were

really authoritative and binding, upon himself and his people, as being the direct utterance of the Divine Will. And this suspicion seems to be confirmed into a certainty, when we call to mind the proofs which we have already had before us, that Deuteronomy was written in a later age than the rest of the Pentateuch.

570. For it could hardly have been the whole Pentateuch, that Hilkiah now found. He gave it, we are told, to Shaphan, and Shaphan read it,'—perhaps, read only part of it,—or, as the Chronicler says, 'read in it,' 2Ch.xxxiv.18,-before he returned to the king on the business, about which he had been sent to the Temple. And Shaphan read it also before the king, and appears to have read to him all the words of the Book. But, the next day again,—perhaps, the same day,—the king himself, we are told, read in the ears of the people all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which was found in the House of Jehovah.' It cannot be supposed that he would read on this occasion all the histories in Genesis, the long account of the construction of the Tabernacle and its vessels, or the details of the Levitical Law. Besides, the Book found by Hilkiah is repeatedly called the Book of the Covenant,' 2K.xxiii.2,3,21, which name can scarcely have been used of the whole Pentateuch, though it very well applies to Deuteronomy, or to the chief portion of that book, since we find it written. D.xxix. 1,

'These are the words of the Covenant, which Jehovah commanded Moses to make with the Children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the Covenant which he made with them in Horeb.'

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571. So, too, this Book of the Law,' which was found by Hilkiah, contained also directions about the Passover, 2K.xxiii. 21, such as we find in D.xvi.1-8, and severe denunciations of the Divine displeasure against all who transgressed the commands contained in it, 2K.xxii.13, such as we find in D.xi.16, 17, xxix. 18-28, xxx.15-20, and, especially, in D.xxviii. 15-68. And it led directly to the putting down with a strong hand of every

kind of idolatrous practice, of all groves, high places, altars, &c., as we read in 2K.xxiii.24 :

'Moreover the familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations, that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the Law, which were written in the Book, that Hilkiah the Priest found in the House of Jehovah.' And this too was in accordance with the commands of the book of Deuteronomy, xii.2,3, xiii. xvi.21,22, xvii.2-7, xviii. 10-12.

In short, the whole description of the nature and effect of the words contained in this Book of the Law,' shows that it must have been the book of Deuteronomy. Accordingly, we have seen already, and shall see yet more plainly, as we proceed, that there are internal signs in this book, which tend to fix the date of its composition to somewhere about this period in the Jewish history.

572. It was, we may believe, the desire of Hilkiah, and, perhaps, of men of yet higher mind about the young king, to take advantage of his own religious and impressible spirit, and of the humbled state of the people, when Judah had been brought low through the oppressions of Manasseh, and the ten tribes had been carried into captivity, to abolish once for all the idolatrous practices which had so long prevailed, and to try to bind the hearts of the remnant of Israel to the Court and to the Temple at Jerusalem. Accordingly, there ensued immediately upon the discovery of this 'Book of the Law,' a complete Reformation of Religion throughout the land, with a thorough and violent rooting up of all idolatrous practices, as described in 2K.xxiii. And then a great Passover was held by the king in Jerusalem. For once, it would seem, the attempt was made to draw all the people thither: and never, we are told,

'from the days of the Judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of Israel, nor of the Kings of Judah,'

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was such a Passover held, as this that was held in the eighteenth year of king Josiah.