1. The first reason is because youth is the best time.

2. Another reason is because youth is the most important time. "Satisfy us early with Thy goodness, that we may be glad and rejoice all our days." What seems a slight mistake at the beginning may make a terrible difference at the end.

3. Another reason for seeking God in early life is because it is noblest to do right now, not to wait until we have spent most of our life doing wrong.

(Christian Age.)

II. EVERY MAN MUST SEARCH CAREFULLY HIS OWN HEART, AND DETERMINE WHETHER THE DEFINITE DESIRE AFTER GOD IS THERE OR NOT. The desire is equivalent to spiritual sight. To help to build up righteousness is serving God.

III. SOME WILL SAY: "BUT I HAVE NO SUCH OPPORTUNITIES AS JOSIAH." Have you sought them? Is not influence on relatives, friends, comrades, fellow-workers an opportunity? Can you never seize suitable occasions for uttering a Christian sentence or scowling on a social sin?

IV. A FURTHER OBJECTION IS "BUT I HAVE SO MANY DIFFICULTIES IN MY WAY, THAT I CAN DO NOTHING USEFUL." Think of those Josiah must have met with.

V. OTHERS SAY: "BUT I NEVER HAD ANY SPECIAL CALL TO SERVE GOD." What if parents, or brothers, or sisters, or friend never mentioned it? Have you never heard it in your heart, and cannot you hear it now? The very passage of time calls you to serve God.

VI. THOSE WHO BEGIN LIFE WITH CHRIST as Saviour, Guide, Helper, Eternal Friend, and who are honestly trying to serve Him, MAY BE SURE THAT HE WILL REJOICE OVER THEM, AND REMEMBER THEM, EVEN THOUGH THEM NAMES MAY NOT BE EMBLAZONED ON ANY GREAT WORLD-ROLL OF HONOUR.

VII. SOME ARE CONSCIOUS THAT THEY ARE NOT MAKING A GOOD BEGINNING OF LIFE. They are drifting onwards and towards dangerous rapids and a deathly abyss. Christ comes to save and to give a fresh start. This is an opportunity which is worth seizing.

(F. Hastings.)

1. From what is familiarly called "the way of the world."

2. From the carnal appetites of youth, which craved to be pampered by their gratification.

3. From all vanities of the imagination.

4. From the exercise of power, before weighing its responsibilities.

5. From false friends and evil counsellors.

6. From the delusions of the gaudy appendages of a worldly Court.

II. WHAT JOSIAH TURNED TO. He fixed his heart and the faith of his soul upon God, as his —

1. Friend.

2. Father.

3. Guide.

III. HE WAS FAITHFUL AND PIOUS FROM HIS EARLIEST DAYS.

(A Gatty, M.A.)

II. YOUTH IS A SEASON IN WHICH YOU HAVE THE GREATEST ADVANTAGES FOR CULTIVATING THE PRINCIPLES OF PIETY, AND THE GREATEST NEED OF RELIGION, AS A DEFENCE FROM TEMPTATION AND DANGERS.

III. BY EARLY PIETY YOU WILL PREPARE TRANQUILITY AND JOY FOR OLD AGE, WHILST BY AN OPPOSITE CONDUCT YOU WILL FILL IT WITH REMORSE AND FEARS.

IV. REGARD TO THE FEELINGS OF ALL PIOUS PERSONS IN THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, A RESPECT TO THE HAPPINESS OF YOUR PARENTS, SHOULD INDUCE YOU EARLY TO DEVOTE YOURSELVES TO GOD.

V. ON YOUR CONDUCT IN YOUTH, YOUR SALVATION OR PERDITION ALMOST INFALLIBLY DEPEND.

(H. Kollock, D. D.)

1. He was a decidedly religious character.

2. His genuine religion commenced at an early period.

3. An exemplary life and conversation abundantly proved the sincerity and ardour of his piety.

4. Josiah's early piety is adduced as the pledge if not the basis of his future eminence in religion.

5. Josiah and his country reaped great advantages from his early devotedness to God.

II. We shall produce ARGUMENTS URGING UPON ALL OUR YOUNG PEOPLE THE EXEMPLIFICATION OF SIMILAR DECIDED PIETY.

1. A due regard to your personal welfare.

2. The plea of relative usefulness —

(1)In the family.

(2)The social circle.

(3)The Church.

3. Many whom you dearly love feel deeply interested in your spiritual welfare.

(1)Parents.

(2)Ministers.

4. The compassionate Saviour not only claims but kindly encourages youthful piety.

(Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

1. God was David's teacher.

2. God was David's comfort.

3. God was David's delight.

4. God was David's defence.

II. THE MANNER HOW HE SOUGHT AFTER GOD. He sought God —

1. From a deep conviction that his conduct and the conduct of Israel generally was highly offensive to God, and that they were exposed to imminent peril.

2. In deep self-abasement of soul.

3. By destroying the idols out of the land.

4. By restoring God's true worship and frequenting it.

5. With all his heart (2 Kings 23:25).

III. THE PERIOD OF LIFE WHEN HE DID IT.

(Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)

I. AN EARLY SEEKER. Our Queen wears a velvet cap under her crown lest it should hurt her head: this eight-year-old king had more need of such a covering. The crown is a heavy burden for young soldiers. Yet there have been younger kings than Josiah. An old Norse king was called Olaf Lapking because he was king while on his mother's lap. Royal boyhood is often poisoned boyhood. The people of Israel around little Josiah were doing worse than the heathen. The sins and sorrows of that time are described in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, whose heart they had broken, Yet Josiah at the age of eight did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and at sixteen began to seek the God of his father David with more earnestness than ever. God calls us to seek Him earlier. In our Latin exercises there was a story about a simpleton sitting one evening at the river's brink. A traveller coming up wished his company in crossing. "No," he replied, "I am waiting till the river flows past." The tiny stream of difficulties between you and Christ won't flow past, but will flow on, and broaden and deepen, till it grows like an angry torrent, swollen with winter floods, that threatens to sweep down the old man who would ford it.

II. JOSIAH WAS ALSO A HEARTY HATER OF EVIL. He did not hate in others the sins he practised himself, He was not like the Czar of Russia who used to say, "I reform my country, and am not able to reform myself." Dr. Arnold used to say, "Commend me to boys who love God and hate evil." Love without hate makes a mere milksop, and Christ's disciples are to be the salt, and not the sugar of society. We need boys who will hate all evil as young Hannibal hated Rome. The young Christian ought to be the sworn foe of the kingdom of darkness.

III. JOSIAH WAS A REAL HERO. A hero is one who, in doing duty, scorns great dangers. He had the spirit of , who replied to the threats of the Empress Eudoxia, "I fear nothing but sin." Josiah's love for the Bible would open his soul to all the best influences from the heroic lives of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel and Gideon. Thus was developed in him what Dr. Chalmers calls "the expulsive power of a new affection."

IV. JOSIAH WAS MISSED AND MOURNED WHEN HE DIED. There is a night in Spain called "the sad night": and so in the history of Judah, the death of Josiah was "the sad day." The Rabbis say that "the memory of him was like costly incense, and sweet as honey in the mouths of all."

(James Wells, M.A.)

     4906   abolition

2 Chronicles 34:19-33

     8466   reformation

2 Chronicles 34:29-33

     7245   Judah, kingdom of

2 Chronicles 34:31-33

     6628   conversion, God's demand

Josiah and the Newly Found Law
'And when they brought out the money that was brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord given by Moses. 15. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. 16 And Shaphan carried the book to the king, and brought the king word back again, saying, All that was committed to thy servants, they do it. 17. And they have gathered together the money …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The History Books
[Illustration: (drop cap T) Assyrian idol-god] Thus little by little the Book of God grew, and the people He had chosen to be its guardians took their place among the nations. A small place it was from one point of view! A narrow strip of land, but unique in its position as one of the highways of the world, on which a few tribes were banded together. All around great empires watched them with eager eyes; the powerful kings of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia, the learned Greeks, and, in later times, …
Mildred Duff—The Bible in its Making

Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant.
"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place."--2 Kings …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

Covenanting Performed in Former Ages with Approbation from Above.
That the Lord gave special token of his approbation of the exercise of Covenanting, it belongs to this place to show. His approval of the duty was seen when he unfolded the promises of the Everlasting Covenant to his people, while they endeavoured to perform it; and his approval thereof is continually seen in his fulfilment to them of these promises. The special manifestations of his regard, made to them while attending to the service before him, belonged to one or other, or both, of those exhibitions …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Chronicles
The comparative indifference with which Chronicles is regarded in modern times by all but professional scholars seems to have been shared by the ancient Jewish church. Though written by the same hand as wrote Ezra-Nehemiah, and forming, together with these books, a continuous history of Judah, it is placed after them in the Hebrew Bible, of which it forms the concluding book; and this no doubt points to the fact that it attained canonical distinction later than they. Nor is this unnatural. The book …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament