The motives for this radical change in immemorial religious custom are characteristic. In the first place, the "high places" had been seats of Canaanite worship before they were taken possession of by the Israelites, and not only did the stigma of aboriginal heathenism cling to them, but, in fact, many heathenish doings were perpetuated at them--drunken debauches and consecrated prostitution. But, further, their existence seemed to be incompatible with strict monotheism: the many gods were worshipped in many places; the _one_ God seemed to have as corollary _one_ place of worship. As a matter of experience, the localizing of Jehovah at numerous sanctuaries--Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba--with their distinctive traditions and local peculiarities of ritual, doubtless did result, for the apprehension of the common man, in making a local Jehovah, as happens to the Virgin and the Saints in Catholic countries. For the Deuteronomist this was only another kind of polytheism: "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, our God, is _one_ Jehovah!" Deuteronomy is, therefore, the programme of a reform. Fortunately, we know how this programme was put in execution; the history of it is written in 2 Kings 22-23. In the course of some repairs in the temple in Jerusalem, a law book turned up, the reading of which threw King Josiah and his advisers into consternation. After taking counsel of a prophetess, an assembly was convoked, and the book publicly ratified by the notables and the people as the law of the realm. Thereupon the king proceeded to put the code in force. He not only cleaned house in the temple in Jerusalem, where a miscellany of foreign gods and cults was installed, but he destroyed and desecrated all the "high places," that is, the immemorial seats of the worship of Jehovah in the towns and villages of his kingdom, pulling the altars to pieces, smashing the stone pillars, hewing down the sacred poles, and forcibly carrying off the priests (levites) to Jerusalem, where he assigned them a living from the income of the temple, but--in his zeal going beyond the law of Deut. xviii. 6-8--excluded them from sacrificial functions.