Page:God and His Book.djvu/30

20 did it remain that long time and not be discovered? The discovery was certainly mysterious, and, in recognition thereof, the king "rent his clothes," which would give a slight impetus to trade in the tailoring line, and the people took to eating roast lamb, without green peas and mint sauce, and called the orgie the "Passover." But, mysterious though the appearance of the book was, its disappearance appears to have been more mysterious still. God does not seem to have written his law upon sheep-skin, but to have inscribed it upon the back of a veritable will-o'-the-wisp.

One hundred and fifty years after Hilkiah's time Ezra managed to put salt on the tail of the Lord's will-o'-the-wisp"—the "Book of the Law" was again discovered! The discovery this time was of an exceedingly peculiar nature. Hilkiah discovered the book in the temple; but Ezra seems to have discovered it inside his own head! After the return from the seventy years' exile by the waters of Babel, Esdras (Ezra) saw necessary to draw the attention of the Lord to the fact that the "Book of the Law" had been destroyed by fire, and thereby the Holy Ghost's name as an author blotted from the records of literature. "Thy law is burnt: therefore no man knoweth the things that are done of Thee." Then, after assuring God that his book had been burnt, Ezra obligingly offers to write him another in its place—to "write all that hath been done in the world since the beginning, which were written in thy law that men may find thy path."