Always wanting to be fair and honest in his condemnation of the people, Jeremiah bethought himself that perhaps only the common people who "know not the way of the Lord and the law of their God" were at fault. Therefore he turned himself to the nobles, to the princes of the realm, to the wealthy and exalted, saying to himself, they "know the way of the Lord and the law of their God." But to his great dismay he found that these, too, "have all broken the yoke and burst the bonds" that made them the beloved of God in the ways of their righteousness. "Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of restraining myself. I must pour it out upon the children in the street and upon the assembly of young men, For both the husband and the wife shall be taken, the aged and him that is advanced in years. And their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields to robbers. For from the least even to the greatest of them, each greedily robs, And from the prophet even to the priest, each deals deceitfully. They heal the hurt of my people as though it were slight, Saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace." This condition was reason enough for Jeremiah to point out, regretfully, "Thy conduct and thy acts have procured these things for thee! This is the cause of thy calamity; verily it is bitter, for it toucheth thy heart." Yet hopefully he pleaded, "Cleanse thy heart, O Jerusalem, from wickedness, that thou mayest be delivered. How long shall thy evil thoughts stay within thee?" This preaching, pleading, threatening, in which Jeremiah was assisted greatly by Zephaniah, King Josiah's teacher, and the little crowd of men, "the remnant" of Isaiah's days, whom Hilkiah had gathered about him, now known as the Prophetic Party was not a matter of days or months, but of years. Josiah, standing practically single-handed among the nobles and the Court Party, the legacy fron his grandfather Manasseh, continued his reforms to the best of his ability. At last the work was having its effect. The constant hammering away began to tell. Great progress was actually being made in the religious and moral awakening of the people. And now came the joyous news that Psammetich I., Pharaoh of Egypt, had sent an embassy to meet the invading Scythians in the north, before they approached Egyptian territory; that he bought the savages off by means of gifts and large sums of money; that the danger of an invasion of Egypt, and therefore of Judah, was past. The Prophetic Party pointed to the sparing of Judah from the ravages of the Scythian scourge as God's way of showing his approval, not alone of the king's outward reforms, but of the people's inner awakening to lives of righteousness.