There were new lights in those days, as there are now. Men who sneered at all the old thoughts and ways, who swept Moses aside with disdain, and thought that David's psalms were poor and feeble things, and that the old-fashioned religion was narrow and provincial, and that the stories of victories won by faith and miracles wrought by prayer were worn-out fictions. They said that if the nation would prosper, it must turn its back on all this stuff, and follow new methods, and profess a new religion. Let them make the great empire, Babylon, their model, with its advanced civilisation, and science, and literature, and vast stores of wealth, with its worship, too, of the sun, and stars, and fire, its religion full of jollity and license, which contrasted so happily with the sober and severe worship of Jehovah, and did not trouble men with unwelcome moral precepts. See how great that empire had become, and how stationary and unprogressive was their own little kingdom, because it clung to the old ways. That was what the new party said. Away with the old-fashioned thoughts and the old-fashioned trusts and beliefs and worship. We are wiser than our simple-minded fathers. We know a few things more than these narrow-minded and crazy prophets. We will have all things new.
And Manasseh, being a young man and as foolish as he was young, drank in greedily their counsels and made himself their leader. For it is ever the temptation of young life to think lightly of their father's wisdom, and to despise what they call the narrow religious beliefs, and the careful moral scruples of the old, and to fancy that they know all things so much better than those who have gone before. They want to try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better time than the old folks knew. That was the course which Manasseh took, just as headstrong and irreverent youths take it now.
Then followed that time which the Jewish people never speak of without shame—a hideous reign of idolatry, and immorality, and injustice; an awful period of persecution for the few righteous and God-fearing people who were left when the prophets had been sought out and slain. Isaiah sawn asunder, Habakkuk stoned to death, the faithful driven into dens and caves of earth. It is of this time that we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in that graphic account of the martyred faithful: "They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was not worthy" (xi. 37, 38). A few years of this sufficed to pull down the whole fabric of religion which Hezekiah had so painfully and patiently raised. For it is so easy to destroy; so easy for folly and irreverence to pull down what wisdom and goodness have taken years in building; so easy for a vicious and irreligious son to bring shame and ruin upon the house which a godly father and mother have spent a lifetime in rearing with honour; so easy, by a few rash acts, to destroy the character and reputation which the prayers and training of years have sought to establish. It is the easiest thing in the world to undo and overturn; there is no cleverness and courage required for destroying, the cleverness and courage are called for in building it up.
Manasseh succeeded to his heart's content. People followed him greedily, except the steadfast few. And presently the prophets were all gone, and the worship of the true God was nowhere practised except in secret, and the sacred names were no more mentioned, and the land gave itself up to all the foul rites and the shameful indulgences of the heathen world, And then God's retribution came swiftly. Where the rotting carcase was, there the eagles gathered together. These same Babylonians whose ways the renegade Jews had so much admired and imitated, swept down upon them with the talons of a vulture, with cruelty that spared neither tender woman nor innocent child, and Jerusalem was burned with fire, and Manasseh carried off in chains and flung into a foreign prison to muse in solitude over the end of his projects, and to find out there that the old ways had been the best.
There we are told that he repented, that he was stricken with shame because of all the evil that he had done, and turned with prayer and humility to the God whom he had defied. And we are told that God was merciful and heard his entreaties, and accepted his repentance, and brought him back after sorrowful years of imprisonment to his land and throne. This is the part of the story which most people emphasise. That, they say, is the main lesson of the story—Manasseh's repentance, and how God accepted the rebellious sinner at the last and forgave him all his iniquities—and they draw from that the conclusion that it is never too late to turn to God, and that all the dark doings of a man's life are swept clean away, if at any time the heart repents and believes.
But this is not the part of the story which the sacred writers dwell upon. In the Book of Kings, where there is another version of Manasseh's doings, no mention is made whatever of the repentance, and here it is only briefly recorded, and in a somewhat sorrowful tone.
He came back humbled and forgiven, indeed, but not in a happy state of mind. He came back to a ruined kingdom; to a sinful and demoralised and destitute people; to see everywhere the sorrow, and the evil and the misery and shame which his doings had caused; to be reminded continually that his life had been a great wicked and foolish blunder, and that there was no undoing the mischief which he had done. For the sake of his repentance he was spared a little longer, but there could be little joy in the remaining years of a life like that.
I think that that is the experience of most men who turn away in their youth from the example and precepts of godly fathers, who reject the truths which make life sober and strong, who betake themselves to thoughts of infidelity and ways of sin, and fancy that they can live life happily without God and prayer. There comes a time when they are made to feel that their life has been a mistake, that it would have been far better for them to have stuck to the old ways, that those believing fathers whom they laughed at were right after all; perhaps they repent and go back to God at last, and He accepts them; but whether repentant or not, they always carry with them an awful burden. Shame is upon them for the evil they have done, shame for the life that has been spent to so little purpose, regret and humbling that they cannot undo the blind and guilty past. Repentance at the best is a poor business when it comes in the evening hours of life. Better then than never; but better far to have gone with God from the beginning. That, I think, is the lesson which the wise man will find in the story of the evil king.