For some time little change would be possible, but from the first facts were working for great issues. The Book of Kings, which places the destruction of the idols after the discovery of the law-book in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, records a previous cleansing and restoration of the house of Jehovah.[23] This points to the growing ascendency of the prophetic party during the first fifteen years of Josiah’s reign. Of the first ten years we know nothing, except that the prestige of Assyria was waning; but this fact, along with the preaching of the prophets, who had neither a native tyrant nor the exigencies of a foreign alliance to silence them, must have weaned the people from the worship of the Assyrian idols. Unless these had been discredited, the repair of Jehovah’s house could hardly have been attempted; and that this progressed means that part of Josiah’s destruction of the heathen images took place before the discovery of the Book of the Law, which happened in consequence of the cleansing of the Temple. But just as under the good Hezekiah the social condition of the people, and especially the behaviour of the upper classes, continued to be bad, so it was again in the early years of Josiah. There was a _remnant of Baal_[24] in the land. The shrines of _the host of heaven_ might have been swept from the Temple, but they were still worshipped from the housetops.[25] Men swore by the Queen of Heaven, and by Moloch, the King. Some turned back from Jehovah; some, grown up in idolatry, had not yet sought Him. Idolatry may have been disestablished from the national sanctuary: its practices still lingered (how intelligibly to us!) in social and commercial life. Foreign fashions were affected by the court and nobility; trade, as always, was combined with the acknowledgment of foreign gods.[26] Moreover, the rich were fraudulent and cruel. The ministers of justice, and the great in the land, ravened among the poor. Jerusalem was full of oppression. These were the same disorders as Amos and Hosea exposed in Northern Israel, and as Micah exposed in Jerusalem. But one new trait of evil was added. In the eighth century, with all their ignorance of Jehovah’s true character, men had yet believed in Him, gloried in His energy, and expected Him to act—were it only in accordance with their low ideals. They had been alive and bubbling with religion. But now they _had thickened on their lees_. They had grown sceptical, dull, indifferent; they said in their hearts, _Jehovah will not do good, neither will He do evil_!