to us on their behalf, saying: "Take this child and train it for me and
I will give thee thy wages." And wages we shall receive just as surely
as did this mother of Moses. We will be privileged to love, to give,
to bless. And God Himself can give no richer reward than that.

XV

A GOOD MAN'S HELL--MANASSEH

_Jeremiah 15:4_

"And I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth
because of Manasseh." The prophet of the Lord is here fixing the
responsibility for the downfall of Jerusalem. He says that the wreck
was due in an especial sense to one man. He makes it very plain that
it was one man's hands that had planted the infernal bomb that was
destined in later years to blast the foundation from under the nation.
"I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth
because of Manasseh."

Had a jury at that day been impanelled to try this man Manasseh I do
not know whether they would have found him guilty or not. Possibly
they would. It is also possible that they would not. Had they failed
to have done so it would have been because they did not know the facts;
they were not entirely familiar with all the evidence in the case. But
when God sought the man upon whose shoulders rested the chief
responsibility for the wreck of the nation, He fixed on this man. When
Manasseh stood on trial before Him, charged with the terrible crime of
blasting a kingdom, he was found guilty.

It was a startling verdict. It is all the more startling when we
realize that Manasseh in the last years of his life was a good man. It
was only his earlier years that were spent in sin. In his old age he
was a saint. In the last years of his reign he knew God and did all
that he could to undo the evils of an ill-spent yesterday. But in
spite of the saintliness of the eventide, in spite of his winter-time
goodness, the full influence of his life was not a blessing but a
curse. It did not make for upbuilding. It made for terrible downfall
and ruin.

Take a glance at his life's story. It is full of interest. Every
young heart in the world should make a study of the life of this man.
How it gives the lie to many of our false and easy conceptions of sin.
How urgent it presses home the truth that the only salvation that can
mean the most is the salvation that grips us from life's earliest
moment to its very last.

Manasseh came to the throne when he was only twelve years of age. He
had not