To Josiah a message had been sent, "Because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when thou heardest His words against this place . . . behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see all the evil that I will bring upon this place." But the spirit of Josiah was not in his son. Instead of repentance and humiliation, anger and stubborn resistance to the will of the Almighty might be read on the darkening countenance of the King of Judea. He would not even suffer Jehudi to read to the end of the roll; Jehoiakim grasped it, and cut it with his knife, and not satisfied with this open insult to the Word of God, this defiance of the terrors of the Almighty, the king flung the mutilated roll into the fire which was burning before him, as if with the blackening parchment he could destroy that Word which abideth for ever! In vain two of the nobles present endeavoured to stay the rash hand of the king, entreating him not to burn the prophetic roll; the rage of Jehoiakim was not satisfied by the crime which he had committed, he wished to wreak his fury on the living witnesses for God, as well as upon His inspired Word; he commanded the seizure of both Jeremiah and Baruch, but the Lord hid them from the anger of the king. What availed it to the wretched Jehoiakim that he had consumed to ashes the writing of the prophet against him? The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, "Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the King of Judah hath burned, and thou shalt say to Jehoiakim, King of Judah, 'Thus saith the Lord; thou hast burned this roll . . . therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, he shall have none to sit upon the throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.' Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch, who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Book which Jehoiakim had burned in the fire, and there were added unto them many like words." Such was the result of this first attempt to mutilate the Scriptures, and stop the free course of the Word of God. It may have been the first, but it assuredly was not the last effort of that kind. Jehoiakim's knife and Jehoiakim's fire have but been precursors of other instruments used for the same unhallowed purpose, notwithstanding the awful warning which is found almost at the close of the Revelation. "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life."