arrangements and innovations to be put to death; he is said to have filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. "Like a destroying lion," says Jeremiah, "the sword devoured your prophets."[418] The death of Manasses and the accession of his son Amon brought no improvement. "He did that which was evil, and walked in the way of his father, and served the idols which his father served." The more energetically the prophets condemned the religion of the Syrians, the more strongly they contended against all customs and sacrifices, against sensuality, luxury, and debauchery, so much the more closely did the elements thus attacked and almost overcome combine together; the more stubbornly did the opposite party cling to the rites of the neighbours, the more eagerly did they collect all the Syrian deities in and round Jerusalem. The highest and the lowest religious conceptions,--the worship of the one holy God in heaven, and the rites of sensuality and mutilation--strove once more with each other with all their force; in the one case with the deepest certainty and conviction, in the other with the fierce impulse of the passions, and the support of the crown. The last ten years of the long reign of Manasses seem to have brought the severest persecution upon the priests and prophets of Jehovah which they ever experienced. And when Amon, after two years, was slain in the king's house by a conspiracy of his servants (640 B.C.), and the people of the land slew all who had conspired against Amon, and raised his son Josiah, a boy of eight years old, to the throne, it was natural to the circle of the priests and prophets to guard against the recurrence of such oppression of their faith and lives as had taken place under Manasses and Amon. This was only possible if the religion which they professed, and for which they suffered, finally obtained a decisive victory, and became the exclusive religion of Judah. If the persecution ceased in the minority of the king, the Syrian rites continued to exist; and if the young king, when he came of age, should join _that_ side, the times of Manasses would recur. Neither the organisation of the priesthood of the temple, nor their religious influence, was sufficient to retain the kings in the faith of Jehovah, and prevent them from reformations and persecutions in the interest of the Syrian rites. What the influence and authority of the priests failed to accomplish, the mighty religious utterance of the prophets in the fulness of their faith was also unable to avert.