Retribution, suffering for sin, does not always come as it came to this king. It does not always come at once but come it does. That is as sure as the fact of God. There are some shallow souls that fancy that because sin does not pay off every Saturday night that it does not pay at all. But to hold such views is to spit in the face of a most open and palpable fact. Manasseh had a fancy that he was a much freer man than his father had been, far more broad-minded, but he waked one day, as every man wakes sooner or later, to discover that sin did not mean freedom, that it only meant slavery. Now, what effect did this degradation and shame and suffering have on the king? Suffering has very opposite influences on different types of character. Sometimes it hardens us, it makes us only the more bitter and rebellious. But suffering did not have that effect on Manasseh. It made him think, and it is a tremendously good day when God can get a man to think. He thought, I dare say, of his saintly father. He thought of his father's God. This story is another evidence of how all but impossible it is for a child to break finally away from the saving influence of a truly good father or truly good mother. This experience not only made him think but it sent him to his knees in an agony of prayer. He came to hate the sin that had been the ruin of him. He asked God for forgiveness. And God did forgive him. Truly, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." No man ever goes so far away from God, no man ever lives in sin so long but that if he will return to God, God will receive him and will give him abundant pardon. Not only did God save this man. He brought him again to his throne. And he who had once been a captive in a strange land wore his crown once more. And for the remaining years of his life he was a devout follower of the Lord. He did his best to undo the evils of the earlier years of his reign. He tore down the altars to false gods that he had builded. He tried to bring his people back to the new and saving faith that he had found. His conversion was genuine and lasting. But what was the result? He did not succeed. He found that it was easier to lead folks astray than it was to bring them back after he had led them astray. He was a good man. He knew God. But this was his hell, that he had to stand in utter helplessness and see his nation totter to its ruin because of the sins that he had committed. He was not even able to save his own home. His boy became a godless idolater, as he himself had been during the best years of his life.