imself yet for a later
generation, pondering his experience, the solution of those problems,
which against the deuteronomic teaching he raised in brave agony to God's
own face.

Such serious differences between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy--upon the Law,
the Temple, the Sacrifices, and Doctrines of Providence and
Morality--suggest an important question with regard to the methods of
Divine Revelation under the Old Covenant. Do they not prove that among
those methods there were others than vision or intuition springing from
the direct action of the Spirit of God upon the spirits of individual men?
Are they not instances of the processes by which to this day in the
Providence of God truth is sifted and ultimately beaten out--namely debate
and controversy between different minds or different schools of thought,
between earnest supporters of various and often hostile opinions in
neither of which lies the whole of the truth? The evidence for Revelation
by Argument which the Book of Jeremiah affords is not the least of its
contributions to the history and philosophy of religion.

Lecture V.

UNDER JEHOIAKIM. 608-597-8 B.C.

1. From Megiddo to Carchemish, 608-605.

Josiah's faithful reign, and with it all thorough efforts to fulfil the
National Covenant,(302) came to a tragic close on the field of Megiddo--the
Flodden of Judah.

The year was 608 B.C. Medes and Chaldeans together had either taken, or
were still besieging, Nineveh; and Pharaoh Necoh,(303) eager to win for
Egypt a share of the crumbling Assyrian Empire, had started north with a
great army. Marching by the coast he first took Gaza, and crossing by one
of the usual passes from Sharon to Esdraelon,(304) found himself opposed
near Megiddo by a Jewish force led by its king in person. The Chronicler
tells us that Necoh sought to turn Josiah from his desperate venture:
_What have I to do with thee? I am come not against thee but against the
House with which I am at war. God hath spoken to speed me; forbear from
God who is with me, lest He destroy thee._(305) But Josiah persisted. The
issue of so unequal a contest could not be doubtful. The Jewish army was
routed and Josiah himself immediately slain.(306)

At first sight, the courage of Josiah and his small people in facing the
full force of Egypt seems to deserve our admiration, as much as did the
courage of King Albert and his nation in opposing the faithless invasion