This, we repeat, was the meaning of Elijah's altar of twelve stones, erected in the face of Jezebel's eight hundred false prophets, and despite the division of the nation in man's view. (1 Kings xviii.) This, too, was the meaning of Hezekiah's letters sent to "_all Israel_" to invite them to "come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the Lord God of Israel." Nothing can be more touching than the spirit and style of these letters. "_Ye children of Israel_, turn again unto the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and He will return to the remnant of you that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria. And be not ye like your fathers and like your brethren, which trespassed against the Lord God of their fathers, who therefore gave them up to desolation, as ye see. Now, _be ye not stiff-necked_, as your fathers were, but _yield yourselves unto the Lord_, and enter into His sanctuary, which He _hath sanctified forever_; and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of His wrath may turn away from you. _For if ye turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion_ before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this land; for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away His face from you" (2 Chron. xxx. 6-9). What was all this but simple faith acting on the grand, eternal, immutable truth of the unity of the nation of Israel? The nation was _one_ in the purpose of God, and Hezekiah looked at it from the divine standpoint, as faith ever does, and he acted accordingly. "So the posts passed from city to city, through _the country of Ephraim and Manasseh_, even unto Zebulun; but _they laughed them to scorn, and mocked them_." This was very sad, but it is only what we must expect. The actings of faith are sure to call forth the scorn and contempt of those who are not up to the standard of God's thoughts. Doubtless these men of Ephraim and Manasseh regarded Hezekiah's message as a piece of presumption or wild extravagance. Perhaps the great truth that was acting with such power on his soul, forming his character and ruling his conduct, was in their judgment a myth, or at best a valueless theory--a thing of the past--an institution of bygone ages, having no present application. But faith is never moved by the thoughts of men, and therefore Hezekiah went on with his work, and God owned and blessed him. He could afford to be laughed at and turned into ridicule, while he beheld divers of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun humbling themselves and coming to Jerusalem. Hezekiah and all who thus humbled themselves under the mighty hand of God reaped a rich harvest of blessing, while the mockers and scorners were left in the barrenness and deadness with which their own unbelief had surrounded them.