written with the poison of asps. Accursed above all names be the names of Hilkiah and Shaphan. Did the shuddering thunder shake the world, and showers of blood splash down from the darkened heaven as Hilkiah lifted from the shelf in the temple that baleful "Book of the Law"? Every leaf has proved the parent of division, schism, and hate. Every line has been a row of dragons' teeth, from which have sprung a crop of armed men. Every word has been an anvil, upon which have been hammered ten thousand swords. Every letter has evolved the fire, the scaffold, the dungeon, and the rack. All the ink that has been shed in producing its millions of millions of copies is a mere drop in the bucket to the merciless deluge of blood with which it has drenched the fire-blackened plains and ruined cities of the world. And the fetters of iron which it has rivetted upon the limbs of the most valiant of our race are as nothing to the shackles of intellectual bondage which, worn for long ages, have made Humanity an aggregation of credulous parasites, crushed by a superstition under the weight of which all creation groans. In the interests of the Human Race I say, Anathama maranatha be the hand that penned that "Book of the Law," and damned be the light of that day which rose upon Jerusalem when Hilkiah told Shaphan what he had found "in the house of the Lord"!
How did Shaphan and his friends know that he had found the "Book of the Law"? Aye, there's the rub. Did they submit the book to the scrutiny of all the scholars and experts of the then civilised world, in order that they might have their verdict as to whether the work was from the stylus of Jehovah or from the pen of some Chatterton of a Jew? No such thing. God and his people do not like learning, and they never did. The wise and prudent, the learned and thoughtful, are not in their line; but the babe and suckling are, and the imbecile and the blockhead. They took the book to no seat of learning; they showed it to no scholar and philologist; but they went off with it under their arm, and showed it to Huldah the witch![1] "Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and
- ↑ "Prophetess" by courtesy.
