Fortunately a king now occupied the throne, the like of whom had not been known since the time of David. Hezekiah (724-696), the son of Ahaz, was the very opposite of his father. His gentle, poetical soul was filled with an ideal, which he beheld in his people's own law, in its ancient statutes and traditions. With the same eagerness with which his father had paid homage to foreign usages, Hezekiah was intent on the restoration of pristine Judæan morals, and the purification of religious conceptions and institutions. He accepted the Torah as the guide of his own life and of that of his nation. His were not only the virtues of justice, generosity and high-mindedness, but also those distinctions of character, which as a rule are foreign to crowned heads, gentleness, modesty, and humility, adorned him. He possessed that deep piety and pure fear of God which are as rarely met with as artistic perfection or military genius. Did the prophets early recognise this nobility of soul and heart in the young prince? Or did their power of vision enable them to foresee the accession of a king on David's throne who would adorn it? Or was it through their early teaching and guidance that he grew up to become the ideal king that he was? Nevertheless it is a fact that two prophets predicted great and promising things of Hezekiah while he was still in his boyhood. During Ahaz's misrule, the prophets and that circle of "the Gentle" who composed the kernel and heart of the nation of Israel, turned their attention to the young prince, from whom they expected the restoration of the golden age enjoyed during the glorious days of David. Hezekiah had witnessed the sins of his father with pain, and bore testimony to the aversion he felt for them immediately after his father's death, inasmuch as he did not bury him in the hereditary sepulchre of the house of David, but in a specially prepared tomb. Hezekiah expressed his convictions in a psalm composed on his accession to the throne, which may be considered a manifesto. (Ps. ci.)