higher life. "The old national flag of China, which for hundreds of years has flown over that great country, was a green, red, and white dragon upon a yellow background, the dragon stretching well across the centre, and engaged in an attempt to get at and swallow the sun in the upper inside corner. Generations of Chinese have lived in mortal fear that he may some time succeed in accomplishing this nefarious purpose. He lived in the earth, but whoever disturbed him was in danger of sickness or pestilence or drought in the village.

"It is easy to see why the Chinese did not open and work their wonderfully rich coal and iron mines, and why they were strongly opposed to digging holes for telegraph poles and cutting through hills for railways. The old dragon held in his relentless grip

ہے

The Ancient Chinese Flag.

A green, red, and white dragon on a yellow background.

the leading resources of the country, and old China was unable to break his hold. He was never friendly and benevolent."

He was the Type of Ahaz in his Country.

"For more than one hundred years missionaries in China have been teaching the people that the world is not ruled by a great evil beast from within, but by the God of heaven." They opened schools, and colleges, and universities. They taught the Bible and Christianity. They showed the Chinese what Christianity had done elsewhere. They showed what Christ was doing to forgive sins, and to save men from sin to everlasting life.

These Missionaries were doing for China what Isaiah the prophet did for Judah in the time of Ahaz.

The Chinese in 1911 became a Republic, and banished the dragon whose picture had" appeared upon the national flag, and was placed upon the postage stamp and coins, embroidered upon garments and magnificent tapestries, cut into their copper and glazed into their china vases.

"That the Chinese are succeeding in effectively casting him down from his throne is demonstrated by the rapid opening of mines in all parts of the country, in the building of thousands of miles of railways with cuts and tunnels, and the setting up of telegraph lines all over China. The old beast that paralyzed progress is dead, or is rapidly dying.

"The new flag consists of five broad equal stripes, running lengthwise. Beginning at the top, the stripes are red, yellow, blue, white, and black. The red represents the Chinese, who constitute the great bulk of the population; the yellow, the Manchus, who ruled China for nearly three hundred years; the blue, the Mongols, who inhabit the great plains of Mongolia ; the white, the Mohammedans, who are scattered widely over the entire country; and the black, the Thibetans, who dwell in Thibet but acknowledge the suzerainty of China. Every man of China, - of whatever race,

as he looks upon the new flag, sees nothing to make him tremble with fear, but beholds a flag which stands for brotherhood, equality, and fraternity, and in which there is always a stripe peculiarly his own. A belief in God as Creator and Ruler of the world has made possible a new China.' - Condensed from Sec'y J. L. Barton, A. B. C. F. M. in Youth's Companion, June, 1915. Mr. Sherwood Eddy, the Y. M. C. A.

So that whenever they see the flag they may see also the ideals and hopes of China. This true story of China's progress is not only good for Sunday scholars to know, as a missionary lesson, but is an admirable illustration of what all should do for our own country, helping it to overcome the evils that endanger its prosperity and usefulness, "overcoming evil by good," and making it nobler, purer, more useful, more like what God would have it to be, based on the true religion of Jesus Christ.

LESSON III. — July 15.

HEZEKIAH, THE FAITHFUL KING.-2 Chron. 30.
PRINT vs. 1-13. MEMORIZE vs. 11, 12.

GOLDEN TEXT. — He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him. — HEB. 11:6.

THE LESSON IN ITS SETTING. The time was during the first five or six years of Hezekiah's reign. The exact dates are very obscure and uncertain. The usual date for the final overthrow VI. of the northern kingdom is B.C. 722-1.

THE LESSON IN LITERATURE.

The attractions of the "Groves" and
High places can be realized from the

How is increased prosperity connected with a better description in Ben Hur of the grove of religious and moral life?

Daphne near Antioch. Edward Everett
Hale's Man without a Country; Plutarch's
Delay of Divine Punishment.

THE LESSON IN ART. Hezekiah Destroying Idols, by an unknown artist.*

I. HEZEKIAH'S PREPARATION FOR HIS LIFE'S WORK, vs. 29: 1, 2. Hezekiah's name means "The strength of Jehovah." He was the good son of a bad father. No one has to be bad because he is brought up under bad influences. God has given every one a free will to enable him to resist evil influences and choose the good.

The surroundings of Hezekiah in his youth seem, at first view, to have been unfavorable in the extreme. The son of a depraved father, he grew up at a corrupt court, where evil influences were on every side. As he grew older he could not help knowing and seeing, and hearing the heathenish practices and ideas around him. The times do not make us good or bad. As Cassius said to Brutus :

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

There were three great influences combined to make Hezekiah the man he became. I. A pious mother, whose name was Abijah, " (My) father is Jehovah," shortened into Abi in the Kings. She was the daughter of Zechariah, and probably her name is mentioned in explanation of his character so contrasted with that of his father. "It is not unnatural to believe that his mother, the daughter of the faithful prophet of King Uzziah's day, was a woman of devout character." "It is

"One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.". - George Herbert.

a quaint saying of the Jewish rabbis, who evidently believed in the divine use of second causes, that God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.'

2. The Prophet Isaiah whose counsel his father refused to accept was probably the tutor and counsellor of the young Hezekiah, so say the Jewish Rabbis. "Isaiah could well afford to be in retirement for ten years if he had the training of such a king. It was natural that Hezekiah should revert to the nobler traditions of his race. As the chronicler says, he was faithfulness itself. His motives were honorable, his enthusiasm steady, his ideals high; so that it was natural that he should give himself heartily at the outset of his reign to a religious reformation."

3. His Wife. Whose name was Hephzibah, "The Delightful" (2 Kings 21 : 1), would naturally be an "helpmeet" for the King, and encourage him in all his religious reforms. He could say:

"I am rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.'

All these good influences would help the young king to resist the temptations around him, and to see clearly the effects of his father's disobedience to God, and lapse into heathenism, and yet more clearly could he discern "that it was because God's people had turned their backs upon him that they had been delivered to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing. Before the hour had come that summoned him to the throne his mind was dominated by a fixed resolution to work for righteousness. Wise and fortunate are those who on reaching the threshold of manhood's responsibilities find themselves fore-armed with a purpose so thoughtful and sublime."

II. PRIESTS AND LEVITES. CLEANSING THE TEMPLE, vs. 29: 2-17. Hezekiah began to reign when he was 25 years old; and in his first year he began his reforms, not in the first month of his reign but in the first month of the sacred New Year, in the spring, the month Nisan, corresponding to parts of our March and April. The usual feast of the Passover began on the fourteenth of Nisan, and is the same variable date as our Easter. He began his Reform by doing the thing that plainly needed most to be done first. He found the Temple, the sacred meeting-place of God and man, with its doors closed by Ahaz, its lamps out, its altars cold, its floors and hangings covered with dust and dirt. Therefore the young king summoned the priests and Levites to the court on the east of the Temple opposite the closed porch (297), and in a frank and noble address declared his conviction that all the national woes had their origin in a neglect of the worship of Jehovah, and his determination to make a new covenant with the Lord.

Religion, sincere, consecrated, working, flowing from a love to God and man, was the only salvation of the nation. "Great as was the peril to which the kingdom was exposed from external attack, great as was its moral unsoundness, Hezekiah saw that all its trouble was rooted in ungodliness."

The first step in cleansing the temple, was for those who were to do this work to sanctify themselves, make themselves pure and clean from all defilement of body and of spirit (295). It was in the king's heart, and should be in theirs, to make a cove

nant with the Lord God of Israel. A solemn agreement and consecration to obey Him in all things, for the LORD hath chosen you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him. This applies to every preacher and teacher.

The next step was to cleanse the temple. The priests brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron, probably in that part of the brook that ran south of the city, and which became the burning place of the city's refuse.

The third step was to prepare everything that was necessary for resuming the regular services of the temple. It took eight days to cleanse the Temple and its courts, and eight more days to put all things in order for the services, including the altar of burnt offering, with all the vessels thereof, and the shewbread table, with all the vessels thereof. Moreover all the vessels, cast away in his transgression, have we prepared and sanctified, and, behold, they are before the altar of the LORD. (29: 18, 19.) Practical. Ye are a temple of God. . . holy (1 Cor. 3 : 16, 17).

Priest, Censer, and Altar of Incense.

which king Ahaz in his reign did

Your body

temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6: 19, 20).

I will dwell in them. . . walk in them (2 Cor. 6: 16-18).

The temple of our hearts and the temple of the church are defiled by all sinful habits and customs, by errors of doctrine, by worldliness of spirit, by lusts of the flesh, by selfish ambitions, by wrong temper, by sins of every kind. These not only defile the temple, but keep others from worshipping and loving God.

Christ's first work in converting a soul, in reviving the church, is to cleanse away sin. "He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap, and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver" (Mal. 3 : 2, 3).

-

III. IN THE TEMPLE. -THE KING, PRINCES, RULERS, PRIESTS, LEVITES, THE PEOPLE. RESTORING THE WORSHIP OF JEHOVAH. A GREAT CONSECRATION MEETING, 29: 20-36. In order that the young people may understand the religious meaning of the ceremonies to be described, it is necessary to translate them into modern terms. They are all symbols and types of great truths of salvation, which are fulfilled in the religion of Christ, and the Christianity of to-day.

AND Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the LORD God of Israel.

2. For the king had taken counsel, and his princes, and all the congregation in Jerusalem, to keep the passover in the second month.

3. For they could not keep it at that time, because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently, neither had the people gathered themselves together to Jerusalem.

4. And the thing pleased the king and all the congregation.

5. So they established a decree to make proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beer-sheba even to Dan, that they should come to keep the passover unto the LORD God of Israel at Jerusalem: for they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written.

6. So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you, that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria.

The offerings and the ceremonies described had for their object such visible types and object lessons as would deeply impress upon the people, and make vivid and real their return to God, the forgiveness of their sins, their consecration to his service, their devotion to his cause with all their mind and heart, body and soul.

1. They offered sin offerings (29:21). "As the sacrifice was not for an individual, but for a whole people, the sin offering on this occasion consisted of seven each of four different sacrificial animals.". Cambridge Bible.

The sin offering represented that God's covenant had been broken by man; and the shedding of the blood, the symbol of life, signified that the death of the offender was deserved for sin, but that the death of the victim was accepted for his death, on condition always that the sinner repented of his sin, and returned to his allegiance to God.

The Burnt Offering (29: 27) was the offering of the whole victim to God, representing the devotion of the sacrificer, body and soul, to him (Rom. 12:11).

The Peace Offerings or thank offerings, the offering of the first fruits, were simply offerings to God of his own best gifts, to express their gratitude to the Giver of every good and perfect gift. There was something for the general congregation to do, as there should be in all worship. They were invited to bring these thank offerings, the fat of which was burned, and a portion of the flesh was waved symbolically toward the altar by the priests, being afterwards eaten by them. The remainder of the flesh was eaten by the people, who, being now purified, could thus partake with Jehovah in this symbolical meal of communion and reconciliation.

Joy Expressed by Music and Singing. The hearts of all were overflowing with joy which could be expressed only by musical instruments and songs of praise. They sang the psalms of David and of Asaph, David's musician, whose name stands at the head of twelve of the Psalms. They accompanied themselves with cymbals, psalteries (a kind of harp) and harps (or lutes). There is a wonderful power in music and every atom of it should be used in God's service. Every revival of religion brings a revival of Music and Song. Many churches have scarcely begun to use this power in its fulness. Some object to responsive singing; some have opposed putting an orchestra in the Sunday school, as if these were modern novelties, instead of 3000 years old. These old saints used every kind of instrument, every method of singing, solos, responses, choruses, marching songs, refrains, everything that would give wings and inspiration to the service of song.

IV. SPREADING THE INVITATION THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE NATION. COURIERS AND MESSENGERS, 30: 1-12.

Revision Changes. v. 3, sufficiently, Am. R., " in sufficient number"; v. 5, done

it of a long time, Am. R., " kept it in great numbers."

Hezekiah's next plan was to take advantage of the religious enthusiasm which had