ey were in danger and in terror, our
forefathers, three hundred years ago. And when they heard this lesson
read in church, it was not likely to make their terror less.

For what says the 26th verse of this chapter? "Notwithstanding," in
spite of all this reformation, and putting away of idols and determining
to walk according to the law of the Lord, "the Lord turned not from the
fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger was kindled against
Judah." And what followed? Josiah was killed in battle--by his own
fault too--by Pharaoh Nechoh, King of Egypt. And then followed nothing
but disaster and misery. The Jews were conquered first by the King of
Egypt, and taxed to pay to him an enormous tribute; and then, in the wars
between Egypt and Babylon, conquered a second time by the King of
Babylon, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, in that dreadful siege in which it is
said mothers ate their own children through extremity of famine. And
then after seventy years, after every one of that idolatrous and corrupt
generation had died in captivity, the poor Jews were allowed to go back
to their native land, chastened and purged in the fire of affliction, and
having learnt a lesson which, to do them justice, they never forgot
again, and have not forgotten to this day; that to worship a graven
image, as well as to work unrighteousness, is abomination to the Lord--
that God, and God alone, is to be worshipped, and worshipped in holiness
and purity, in mercy and in justice.

And it was some such fate as this, some terrible ruin like that of the
Jews of old, that our forefathers feared three hundred years ago. Their
hearts were not yet altogether right with God. They had not shaken off
the bad habits of mind, or the bad morals either, which they had learnt
in the old Romish times--too many of them were using their liberty as a
cloak of licentiousness; and, under pretence of religion, plundering not
only God's Church, but God's poor. And many other evils were rife in
England then, as there are sure to be great evils side by side with great
good in any country in times of change and revolution. And so our
forefathers needed chastisement, and they had it. King Edward, upon whom
the Protestants had set their hopes, died young; and then came times
which tried them literally as by fire. First came the terrible
persecutions in Queen Mary's time, when hundreds of good men and women
were burnt alive for