“He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah nor any that were before him. For he clave to the Lord, and departed not from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses.” At length a man arose who said: “I will do God’s will, God helping me. I will not only read the commandments, but I will incarnate them. I will not only speak religious words, but live a religious life.” Tender and yet emphatic are the words: “He trusted,” “he clave,” “he kept.” He “trusted”--that is to say, he had no other trust. His religion was not a convenience, one thing among many things, an occasional exercise in piety; but it was a perpetual confidence, the one trust, the all-centralizing and all-ruling fact. Then he “clave”--he kept close to. He would not allow any thing to come between his hand and the God he seized. The hand could do nothing except cleave to God and what was possible through that cleaving; and much is possible of a helpful and beneficent kind. He “kept the commandments”--counted them one by one; examined himself in them; took himself daily to task about the whole ten. We live an off-hand life. Religion is now as easy as a wave of the hand, a salutation across a thoroughfare; it is something that can be taken up, laid down, forgotten and resumed. What wonder if the Rab-shakehs of the age come and taunt us, mock our piety and blow back our prayers before they get to the skies? We want more trust, more cleaving piety, more keeping of the commandments, living in them and having no other life that is not consonant with them. Now came, as we have often seen, the inevitable temptation. We pass instantly to the visit of Rab-shakeh. This Rab-shakeh was an eloquent man. He had the gift of mockery; he could gibe well. He was not without a certain logical qualification. He made a long and offensive speech to the people under Hezekiah’s rule, and he thought he had them at both ends of the argument. Having mocked their piety, laughed it down, challenged it, spat upon it, he said: “Perhaps you will say: ‘We trust in the Lord, our God,’ but you forget that this very man, Hezekiah, has thrown down His altars, has taken away His groves, has rooted up the house of your God by the foundations.” Rab-shakeh did not understand the destructive reformation wrought out by Hezekiah. He heard of the groves being cut down and the holy places being removed, and he said: “This is so much to our advantage. The king of Assyria shall hear of this, and we shall make good commerce of it.” Rab-shakeh did not distinguish between idolatry and piety--between a reform essential to health and a mere accident in history. That which was good in Hezekiah seemed to be wickedness to Rab-shakeh. Rab-shakeh assaulted the people, trampled on them, leaped over their bodies, mocked their refuges and their trust, and thrust his fist into the face of Egypt and said: