In a word, this new historian shows us in every line that the theological instinct has superseded popular enthusiasm, and his work loses unmistakably in literary interest by the change. We feel that he is wanting in feeling and inspiration; his characters no longer palpitate with life; his narrative drags, its interest decreases, and his language is often deficient in force and colour. But while writers, trained in the schools of the prophets, thus sought to bring home to the people the benefits which their God had showered on them, the people themselves showed signs of disaffection towards Him, or were, at any rate, inclined to associate with Him other gods borrowed from neighbouring states, and to overlay the worship they rendered Him with ceremonies and ideas inconsistent with its original purity. The permanent division of the nation into two independent kingdoms had had its effect on their religion as well as on their political life, and had separated the worshippers into two hostile camps. The inhabitants of Judah still continued to build altars on their high places, as they had done in the time before David; there, the devout prostrated themselves before the sacred stones and before the Asherah, or went in unto the _kedeshoth_ in honour of Astarte, and in Jahveh's own temple at Jerusalem they had set up the image of a brazen serpent to which they paid homage.* The feeling, however, that the patron deity of the chosen people could have but one recognised habitation--the temple built for Him by Solomon--and that the priests of this temple were alone qualified to officiate there in an effective manner, came to prevail more and more strongly in Judaea. The king, indeed, continued to offer sacrifices and prayer there,** but the common people could no longer intercede with their God except through the agency of the priests. * Cf. what we are told of idolatrous practices in Judah under Rehoboam and Abraham (1 Kings xiv. 22-24; xv. 3), and of the tolerance of high places by Asa and Jehoshaphat (1 Kings xv. 14; xxii. 44); even at the period now under consideration neither Amaziah (2 Kings xiv. 4) nor Azariah (2 Kings xv. 4) showed any disposition to prohibit them. The brazen serpent was still in existence in the time of Hezekiah, at the close of the VIIIth century B.C. (2 Kings xviii. 4). ** 2 Kings xvi. 10-16, where Ahaz is described as offering sacrifice and giving instructions to the high priest Urijah as to the reconstruction and service of the altar; cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-21, where similar conduct on the part of Uzziah is recorded, and where the leprosy by which he was attacked is, in accordance with the belief of later times, represented as a punishment of the sacrilege committed by him in attempting to perform the sacrifice in person.