YOU heard what a bad, cruel king Jehoiakim was. Still there was a hope that he and his people would take warning, when he heard that God would punish his sin; so Jeremiah the Prophet had all his prophecies written out on a roll of parchment, and his friend Baruch went to the Temple, and read to the people that if they would not worship God and serve Him faithfully, He would cause them all to be taken away prisoners to a strange land. Baruch stood reading the parchment; and the people listened to him, and some of them began to grow afraid. But then came some of the king's great people, and when they heard it they thought it would make the king angry. They forgot that God's anger signified much more than the king's anger. They did not want Jeremiah or Baruch to be punished, but they were afraid to let the reading go on. So they told Baruch to go away and hide himself and Jeremiah carefully, and then they took the prophecies to shew them to the king. The king was sitting by the fire warming himself, for it was in the winter. He listened for a little while; but when he found that the parchment was about his sins and God's anger, he took out a knife and cut the whole into bits, and burnt it in the fire. Was he so foolish as to think that burning the prophecy would prevent it from coming to pass? If so, he made a great mistake; for God desired Jeremiah to have it all written over again, and more too; for the punishment was to be worse now than it would have been before--much worse than if Jehoiakim had listened, and left off his bad ways, and prayed to God. [Illustration: TWO PAGES OF AN ANCIENT SCROLL OF SCRIPTURES.] In a very short time the enemy all came round Jerusalem, and everyone was shut up in the city, and could not get out, and food was very scarce; and Jehoiakim was taken and put in chains; and thus he died, and nobody grieved for him. His young son, Jehoiachin, was called king for a little while, but only for a very little while; for the king of Babylon broke into the city, and made him prisoner, and took him away to be shut up far from home. And as to the dead body of Jehoiakim himself, nobody had time to give him a burial; so it was thrown out at the gates as if he had been a dead ass instead of a king of Judah. So you see God's words through Jeremiah all came true, though Jehoiakim would not heed them. He only made it worse by not listening. QUESTIONS. 1. Who was the king? 2. Who was the prophet? 3. What had Jeremiah said about Jehoiakim? 4. Where did God tell him to have it written? 5. Who was to read it? 6. To whom did Baruch read? 7. Where did the great people take the roll of parchment? 8. What did the king do to it? 9. Whose words did he throw away? 10. Why would not he listen? 11. Did he hinder the harm from coming? 12. What happened to him? 13. How was he buried? 14. How should he have tried to prevent the harm from coming? 15. How should you behave if you have fault found with you? THIRD READING.