they rather fling great ideas upon the
mind of their nation, and leave it to others to find out how
practical effect may be given to their teaching. To the very end of
the Jewish state the prophets and their sympathisers appear to be in
a small minority of their nation. The people as a whole is
unconverted, the worship of idols goes on, and so does the worship of
other gods, even in the temple at Jerusalem. It has seemed to some
great scholars that Israel, as a whole, was a heathen people up to
the time of the exile, and still needed to be converted to the
religion of Jehovah. Kuenen shows[1] in a convincing way that this is
an exaggeration, and that people and prophets alike held the religion
of Jehovah to be the true religion of Israel; but up to the exile
that religion was not reformed in the way the prophets desired.

[Footnote 1: _Hibbert Lectures_, ii.]

The Reforms.--Yet the word of Jehovah had not returned to him void
even during this period. A considerable series of reforms are
narrated in the histories, and attested by successive codes of law
now embodied in the Pentateuch. These show that the prophetic ideas
had gained for themselves a strong party among the people, and that
in several reigns the court was under their influence. These reforms
show progress in two directions. There is a growing desire to make
the worship of Jehovah correspond to the exalted new conceptions of
his character as a being of incomparable majesty and holiness; and
there is, on the other hand, a rapid growth of moral sentiment;
justice and kindness to others are placed more and more in the
forefront of the divine requirements. We can do little more than name
the passages where the details of these matters may be found. The
reforms of Hezekiah (1 Kings xviii.) did not last long. He destroyed
a celebrated image of Jehovah, a fate which other images may have
shared, and he remodelled the worship of the holy places throughout
Judah, so as to remove its more heathenish features, and concentrate
it on Jehovah alone. Manasseh, Hezekiah's successor, pursued the
opposite policy. In his reign a large collection of strange cults,
some of them perhaps those of the individual tribes, were brought
back into use; even the barbarous rite of human sacrifice was
established at Jerusalem, and the worship of Jehovah became more
intense and darker. The shadow of the Assyrian is upon Israel, and as
generally happens in times of public anxiety, rites lon