temple because he sacrificed with his own hands in the great space of the temple, the holy place (before the Holy of Holies), on the altar in that space intended for incense. David and Solomon had offered incense there before him; the priesthood intended therefore to make good their exclusive claim to every kind of sacrifice as against Uzziah.[50] Uzziah succeeded in raising Judah to the highest point of power and importance, which it reached after the defection of Israel. Thus after severe tempests the reigns of Jeroboam II. and Uzziah brought to Israel and Judah the restoration of order, power and prosperity. The flourishing condition of agriculture and trade increased the well-being of the people, and produced profits which led the wealthy classes into a misuse of their wealth, into extravagance and luxury. This mode of life, which seldom, in the East especially, fails to accompany gains easily got, was attacked in both kingdoms by a merciless criticism. In Israel and in Judah a careless enjoyment of life was connected not unfrequently with a certain inclination towards the rites of the Syrians. From the time that the house of Jehu ruled in Israel, and Joash ascended the throne of Judah, the favourable feeling towards Syrian rites had ceased, from the throne downwards. With the restoration of more active relations towards the neighbouring nations their example operated with renewed force on the wealthier classes of Israel, and among them, and afterwards no doubt among the people, admission and recognition was thus gained for the religious observances of the Syrians. As the sensual elements in the forms of the gods and the cultus of the Syrians became more marked--as the worship of the deities of procreation and birth became more licentious and debauched, in connection with the increased population, and consequent luxury and dissoluteness in the Phenician cities (II. 276), as the prostitution became more general, the service of androgynous deities more zealous--as the number of sacred servants, of companions male and female, of eunuchs and men ready to make themselves eunuchs, became larger--as this worship of lust and mutilation grew more disgusting, and the flames on the altar of Moloch rose more frequently--so much the more vigorous, in the circles of the neighbouring nations, whose national and religious life was roused, must have been the aversion and opposition to such licentious practices, to rites of so different a nature, and so strongly at variance with their own faith.