Thus the defeat of Necho and the retreat of the Egyptian army aroused no feelings of delight in Jerusalem at the blow which had there fallen upon the lord of the Nile. There was a fear of the approach of the Babylonians. We saw with what vigour the prophet Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah of Anathoth, had opposed the careless frivolity of Jehoiakim, the king whom Necho had placed over the Jews (p. 317). After the disastrous day at Megiddo, the fall of Josiah, and carrying away of Jehoahaz to Egypt, the eye of the prophet had been directed to the dangerous position of the kingdom. Necho's army was then in Syria; one city after another succumbed to his arms. To the melancholy mind of Isaiah the fall of the kingdom seemed unavoidable. This conviction he expressed; he foretold to Jehoiakim the most disgraceful fall. In energy and power of thought Jeremiah cannot be compared with Isaiah, but in the boldness and incisiveness of his opposition to the king and nation he surpasses him. Isaiah had firmly held to the preservation and maintenance of the city of Jerusalem and the temple, even in the judgment of Jehovah on Israel and Judah. The conception that Jehovah's temple, and his habitation in the holy of holies of the temple, was a pledge for the security of the city, that Jehovah could not abandon and destroy his temple and shrine, was a fixed idea among most of the prophets and among the people; it was confirmed by the fortunate preservation from the army of Sennacherib, and the hordes of the Sacæ; and the Jews had confidence in the impregnable nature and lasting security of their temple and city. In this confidence Jeremiah detected a grave evil. The people trusted to the impregnable nature of the shrine and city; the Jews believed that in spite of their errors and sins they would be secure of Jerusalem owing to the temple. Therefore he set himself energetically to combat this belief. He is filled with the conception of the approaching judgment, which will be brought on by the defection of past times, "when Israel like a swift young dromedary went after every stranger;"[590] and by her unrighteous conversation in the present time. His conception, which in depth of religious feeling is raised above the views of the earlier prophets, is that all external customs and symbols must fall to the ground, not sacrifices only and fasts, but the temple and the ark of the covenant. Not till a radical destruction has taken place will the restoration of the people follow, by means of a small remnant of the righteous, and a shoot from the stock of David. In Jeremiah's view the people cannot be saved without the stroke of annihilation, "for the Ethiop cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots."[591] But after this judgment Jehovah will "make a new covenant" with his people, "which is not like that which he made with their fathers, when he led them out of Egypt." "I will put my law in your inward parts," saith Jehovah, "and write it in your