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YALE UNIVERSITY
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YALE UNIVERSITY
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JEREMIAH, PRIEST AND PROPHET

Rev. Frederick B. Meyer, B. A.

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JEREMIAH

PRIEST AND PROPHET

BY
F. B. MEYER, B.A.
AUTHOR OP "ELIJAH, AND THE SECRET OF HIS POWER," "MOSES, THE
SERVANT OF GOD," "TRIED BY FIRE," "THE SHEPHERD PSALM," ETC.

4*

FLEMING H. REVELL CO.
New-York Chicago Toronto
Publishers of Evangelical Literature

Copyright, 1894, by
Fleming H. Revell Company.

PREFACE.
JEREMIAH has always a fascination to Christian hearts,
because of the close similarity that exists between his
life and that of Jesus Christ. Each of them was "a man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief"; each came to his
own, and his own received him not ; each passed through
hours of rejection, desolation, and forsakenness. And in
Jeremiah we may see, beaten out into detail, experiences
which, in our Lord, are but lightly touched on by the evan
gelists. It is by no means an easy task to discern the true order of
Jeremiah's prophecies. The clew to their present arrange
ment seems lost. Probably the chapters are grouped more
according to subject than to chronology, those touching
on the same topic being grouped together. In this book I
have endeavored, as far as possible, to follow the chrono
logical sequence.
If I had been writing a history of the last days of the
monarchy of Judah, these pages would have been much
extended ; but I have refrained from this, wishing only to
tell so much of the general story as was needful to eluci
date the part Jeremiah was called to play.
It will more than serve my purpose if I shall be able to
make the personality of this great man more familiar to the
general Christian public. For some reason there is a great
amount of ignorance of the life and times of Jeremiah,
which contrasts remarkably with the veneration with which
tlie Jews have always regarded him. But amid the names
5

o PREFACE
that shine as stars in the hemisphere of Old Testament
Scripture, there is not one more brilliant than his.
There is an especial message in the ministry of Jeremiah
for those who are compelled to stand alone, who fall into
the ground to die, who fill up what is behind of the suffer
ings of Christ, and through death arise to bear fruit in the
great world of men, which they passionately love.
F. B. Meyer.

CONTENTS.
I. "The Word of the Lord Came unto Me" ... 9
II. " I Formed Thee "  17
III. Cistern-making  25
IV. The Second Discourse  34
V. At the Temple Gates  42
VI. The Soul's " Amen "  52
VII. The Swelling of Jordan  62
VIII. The Drought  71
IX. " On the Potter's Wheel"  80
X. The Fire of Holy Impulse  89
XI. Afflictions, Distresses, Tumults  99
XII. The Indestructible Word  108
XIII. The Rechabites  117
XIV. Hidden, but Rampant  126
XV. The Ministry of Destruction  135
XVI. Jeremiah's Grandest Ode  146
XVII. How a Reed Stood as a Pillar  157
XVIII. Into the Ground, to Die  168
XIX. The Fall of Jerusalem  177
XX. A Clouded Sunset  189

JEREMIAH, PRIEST AND PROPHET

" STIje tiJovb of iljc toxb (frame unto Me"
(Jeremiah i. 4, 11, 13.)
" We know — things that we cannot say ;
We soar — where we could never map our flight ;
We see — flashes and colorings too quick and bright
For any hand to paint. We hear —
Strange, far-off mental music, all too sweet,
Too great for any earthly instrument ;
Gone, if we strive to bring it near." F. R. Havergal.
IF the days of David and Solomon may be compared to
spring and summer in the history of the kingdom of
Israel, it was late autumn when our story opens. The in
fluence of the spiritual revival under Hezekiah and Isaiah,
which had for a brief interval arrested the process of de
cline, had spent itself ; and not even the reforms of the
good King Josiah, which affected rather the surface than
the heart of the people, could avail to avert inevitable
judgment. The northern tribes were captive on the plains of Meso-
9

io JEREMIAH, "PRIEST AND -PROPHET
potamia, whence, in the dawn of history, their race had
sprung. And Judah, unwarned by the fate of her sister
Israel, was rapidly pursuing the same path, to be presently
involved in a similar catastrophe. King and court, princes
and people, prophets and priests, were infected with the
abominable vices for committing which the Canaanites had
been expelled from the Promised Land centuries before.
Every high hill had its thick grove of green trees, within
whose shadow the idolatrous rites and abominable license
of nature-worship were freely practiced. The face of the
country was thickly covered with temples erected for the
worship of Baal and Astarte, and all the host of heaven,
and with lewd idols. In the cities, the black-robed chema-
rim, the priests of these unhallowed practices, flitted to
and fro in strange contrast to the white-stoled priests of
Jehovah. The people were taught to consider vice as part
of their religion, and to frequent houses dedicated to im
purity. All kinds of evil throve unchecked. The poor
were plundered, the innocent falsely accused ; wicked men
lay in wait to catch men ; theft and murder, adultery and
idolatry, like spores of corruption, filled the fetid air and
flourished on the tainted soil (ii. 20, 27, 34; v. 7, 8, 26;
ix. 2).
But it was in Jerusalem that these evils came to a head.
In the streets of the Holy City the children were taught to
gather wood, while the fathers kindled the fire, and the
women kneaded dough to make cakes for Astarte, '' the
queen of heaven," and to pour out drink-offerings unto
other gods. The Temple, with so many sacred associa
tions, was the headquarters of Baal-worship; its courts
were desecrated by monstrous images and symbols, and
its precincts were the abode of infamous men and women.
It seemed as though the king of Sodom had dispossessed
Melchizedek in his ancient home. Below the Temple bat-

" THE IVORD OF THE LORD CAME UNTO ME" ri
tlements, deep down in the Valley of Hinnom, scenes were
constantly witnessed that recalled the darkest cruelties of
heathendom. There was the high place of Tophet, which
derived its name from the clamor of the drums that drowned
the cries of the babes flung into the fires. It was an awful
combination. " The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of
the Lord ! " was the cry of the heartless formalist, while
below the sacred shrine such scenes of devilry were rife.
Ah me! would that it had been the last time in the world's
history when the profession of true religion had been ac
companied by the license of vice and the service of the
devil! In such a Sodom God's voice must be heard. The
Judge of all the earth must warn the ungodly of a certain
retribution, only to be averted by swift repentance. The
Good Shepherd must seek his wayward sheep. Better be
lieve that there is no God than think that he could be speech
less in the presence of sins that frustrated his election and
long education of Israel and threatened to terminate its
very existence as a people.
Yet if God speak, it must be through the yielded lips of
man. For if his voice struck the ear of sinful man directly,
it would either paralyze him with dread, or seem indistinct,
like the mutterings of thunder. Therefore in every age the
Divine Spirit has gone through the world seeking for the
prepared lip of elect souls through which to utter himself.
He seeks such to-day. Men are still the vehicles of his
communications to men. To us, as to Ezekiel, the Divine
Spirit says, " Son of man, thou shalt hear the word at my
mouth, and give them warning from me."
In the call of Jeremiah we may discover the sort of man
whom God chooses as the medium for his speech. And
our discovery will greatly startle us. We shall find the
heavenly treasure in a simple earthen vessel: not in the

12 JEREMIAH, TR1EST AND TROPHET
metropolis, but in the poor village of Anathoth, three miles
to the north ; not in an elder, but in a youth ; not among
the high and noble, but in the family of an undistinguished
priest ; not in a man mighty as Elijah, eloquent as Isaiah, or
seraphic as Ezekiel ; but in one who was timid and shrink
ing, conscious of his helplessness, yearning for a sympathy
and love he was never to know. Such was the chosen organ
through which the word of the Lord came to that corrupt
and degenerate age.
It is not to be expected that a superficial gaze will dis
cern the special qualifications that attracted the divine
choice to Jeremiah. But that is no wonder. The instru
ments of the divine purpose in all ages have not been such
as man would have selected. God has always chosen " the
foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame
them that are wise ; and the weak things of the world, that
he might put to shame the things that are strong ; and the
base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to
naught the things that are : that no flesh should glory be
fore God." Your family may be poor in Manasseh, and
yourself the least in your father's house — nothing more
than a cake of barley-bread ; yet if God lay hold of you
he will work a wonderful deliverance. But there were
several reasons why Jeremiah might have been passed over :
He was young. How young we do not know ; but young
enough for him to start back at the divine proposal, with
the cry, " Ah, Lord God ! behold, I cannot speak : for I
am a child." Without doubt, as a boy he had enjoyed
peculiar advantages. He came of a priestly family ; his
father, Hilkiah, may have been the high priest who, in the
discharge of his sacred office in the Temple, discovered the
manuscript roll which proved to be a copy of the Book
of the Law and led to the reformation under Josiah. His

" THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME UNTO ME " 13
uncle, Shallum, was the husband of Huldah, the prophet
ess, in whom the fire of the old Hebrew faith was burning
brightly, even in those days of almost universal degeneracy.
Shaphan, Baruch, and Hanameel were probably the com
panions of his youth, and afterward formed a little band
who nourished the noblest traditions of the national life.
Still, Jeremiah was but as a child.
God has often selected the young for posts of eminent
service: Samuel and Timothy, Joseph and David, Daniel
and Jeremiah ; Calvin, who wrote his " Institutes " before he
was twenty-four ; and Wesley, who was only twenty-five
when he inaugurated the great system of Methodism. In
every age of the Church young eyes have eagerly scanned
this paragraph, and have dared to cherish the hope that
since youth did not disqualify Jeremiah, so it would not
render them unfit for the special service of God. The
only thing to be sure of is that God has really called you ;
and this can only be ascertained after very careful con
sideration. There is, first, the consciousness of a strong in
ward impulse, which is most present in the holiest hours,
but which is never far away, and often surges up pure and
strong in the soul. There is, next, a certain concurrence
of Providence, by which other doors seem closed, and that
opened which conducts to the desired goal. Besides these
there is a natural adaptation, a consensus of opinion among
friends and advisers, and the constant voice of the Spirit
through the Word.
He was naturally timid and sensitive. By nature he
seemed cast in too delicate a mold to be able to combat
the dangers and difficulties of his time. He reminds us of
a denizen of the sea, accustomed to live within its shell,
but suddenly deprived of its strong incasement, and thrown
without covering on the sharp edges of the rocks. The
bitter complaint of his after-life was that his mother had

H JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
brought him into a world of strife and contention. And
it was in allusion to the natural shrinking of his disposition
that Jehovah promised to make him a " defenced city, and
an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land."
Many are molded upon this type. They have the sensi
tiveness of a girl, and the nervous organism of a gazelle.
They love the shallows, with their carpet of silver sand,
rather than the strong billows that test a man's endurance.
For them it is enough to run with footmen ; they have no
desire to contend with horses. They love the land of peace
in which they are secure, and have no heart for the swell
ing of Jordan. Yet such, like Jeremiah, may play an heroic
part on the world's stage, if only they will let God lay
down the iron of his might along the lines of their natural
weakness. His strength is only made perfect in weakness.
It is to those who have no might that he increaseth strength.
Happy is the soul that can look up from its utter helpless
ness and say with Jeremiah, " O Lord, my strength in the
day of affliction ; " or with Micah, in yet earlier times,
" Truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and
of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his trans
gression, and to Israel his sin."
He specially shrank from the burden he was summoned to
bear. His chosen theme would have been God's mercy —
the boundlessness of his compassion, the tenderness of his
pity. In the earlier chapters, when pleading with the peo
ple to return to God, there is a tenderness in his voice and a
pathos in his speech, which prove how thoroughly his heart
was in this part of his work. Some of his choicest allur
sions to natural scenes are intended to set forth the love
of God to backsliding and penitent souls. God's mercy
is like "a fountain of living waters," as contrasted to the
brackish contents of the rock-hewn cisterns ; or like the
ocean waves lapping on the bank of soft sand they may

" THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME UNTO ME " 15
not pass ; or like a husband's great love, which cannot for
get the day of espousal amid the unfaithfulness which has
ruined the peace of his home.
But to be charged with a message of judgment ; to an
nounce the woful day; to oppose every suggestion of
heroic resistance ; to charge home on the prophetic and
the priestly orders, to each of which he belonged, and the
anger of each of which he incurred, the crimes by which
they were disgraced — this was the commission that was
furthest from his choice. " As for me," he cried, " I have
not hastened from being a shepherd after thee : neither
have I desired the woful day; thou knowest " (xvii. 16).
He was conscious of his deficiency in speech. Like Moses
he could say, " O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant ;
but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." Like
Isaiah he might cry, " Woe is me ! for I am undone ; be
cause I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst
of a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts." Like the Apostle Paul he could
affirm, " My speech and my preaching were not in persua
sive words of wisdom." "Then said I, Ah, Lord God!
behold, I cannot speak : for I am a child."
The best speakers for God are frequently they who are
least gifted with human eloquence ; for if that be richly
present — the mighty power of moving men — there is an
imminent peril of relying on it and attributing the results to
its magnetic spell. God cannot give his glory to another.
He may not share his praise with man. He dare not ex
pose his servants to the temptation of sacrificing to their
own net or trusting their own ability. And so he often
chooses uneloquent lips, and touches them with his finger,
and leaves his words trembling there, the meet vehicles of
his thoughts that burn on the altar of the soul. Of him,

1 6 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
and through him, and to him must be all things, that the
glory may be his forever.
Do not then despair because of these apparent disqualifi
cations. None of them will shut out from thee the accents
of the voice of God. Notwithstanding all, the word of
the Lord shall come to thee ; not for thy sake alone, but
for those to whom thou shalt be sent. The one thing that
God demands of thee is absolute consecration to his pur
pose, and willingness to go on any errand on which he
may send thee. If these are thine all else will be given
thee. He will hush thine alarm — " Be not afraid ! " He
will assure thee of his presence — " I am with thee to de
liver thee." He will equip thee — " Then the Lord put forth
his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto
me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth." How
the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah we cannot tell ;
whether audibly as to Samuel, or in the deep chambers of
his soul. But when it came he knew it. And we shall
know it. Oh for the circumcised ear and the loyal, obedi
ent heart !

II.
"JiFortncb Sffrjee."
(Jeremiah i. 5.)
" I was not born
Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank
From aught which marked me out apart from men :
I would have lived their life, and died their death,
Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny." Browning.
GOD has a plan for each of his children. From the
foot of the cross, where we are cradled in our second
birth, to the brink of the river, where we lay down our
armor, there is a path which he has prepared for us to
walk in. Its roughness and steeps, its velvet grass and
quiet glades, its climb up the mountain side and descent
into the valley of dark shadow, have all been planned and
laid out by his matchless wisdom, his unerring love. The
path has been prepared ; it is for us to walk in it.
On the other hand, God prepares us for the path he
has chosen. We are his workmanship, created unto the
good works which he has before prepared. There is no
emergency in the path for which there has not been provis
ion made in our nature ; and there is no faculty stored in
our nature which, sooner or later, shall not have its proper
exercise and use. From the earliest inception of being
God had a plan for Jeremiah's career, for which he pre
pared him. Before the dawn of consciousness, in the very
17

1 8 JEREMIAH, PRIEST AND PROPHET
origin of his being, the hands of the great Master Work
man reached down out of heaven to shape the plastic clay
for the high purpose which he had in view. Note the
conjunction of those two expressions : " I appointed and
sanctified thee a prophet to the nations ; " and again, " I
formed thee." God always forms those whom he has ap
pointed and sanctified for any great work.
Ask what thy work in the world is — that for which
thou wast born, to which thou wast appointed, on account
of which thou wast conceived in the creative thought of
God. That there is a divine purpose in thy being is in
dubitable. Seek that thou mayest be permitted to realize
it. And never doubt that thou hast been endowed with
all the special aptitudes which that purpose may demand.
God has formed thee for it, storing thy mind with all that
he knew to be requisite for thy life-work. It is thy part
to elaborate and improve to the utmost the two talents
which thou hast. Do not envy another his five. Those
three additional ones were not needed for the special pur
pose that thou wast designed to fulfill. And it is enough
to answer the divine intention in thy creation, redemption,
or call to service, whatever it may have been. Do not be
jealous or covetous ; it is enough for thee to be what God
made thee to be, and to be always at thy best.
I. The Divine Purpose. — " 1 knew thee, . . . I sanctified
thee, . . . I have appointed thee a prophet." In that degen
erate age the great Lover of souls needed a spokesman ;
and the divine decree determined the conditions of Jere
miah's birth and character and life. How this could be
consistent with the exercise of personal volition and choice
on the part of the youthful prophet, we cannot say. We
can only see the two piers of the mighty arch, but not the
arch itself, since the mists of time veil it, and we are dim

"/ FORMED THEE" 19
of sight. Some try to explain it by introducing the thought
of foreknowledge ; they quote the words, " Whom he did
foreknow he also did predestinate." But, after all, this
only carries the difficulty one step farther back into mys
tery. It is wise to ascertain, if possible, while life is yet young,
the direction of the divine purpose. There are four con
siderations that will help us : First, the indication of our
natural aptitudes ; for these, when touched by the Divine
Spirit, become talents or gifts. Secondly, the inward im
pulse or energy of the Divine Spirit, working in us both to
will and to do of his good pleasure. Thirdly, the teaching
of the Word of God. Fourthly, the evidence of the cir
cumstances and demands of life. When these concur, and
focus in one point, there need be no doubt as to the divine
purpose and plan. It was thus that God disclosed to
Samuel and Jeremiah and Saul of Tarsus the future for
which they were destined. And it is extremely delightful
when, from the first bud of youth to the flower and fruit
of maturity, the heavenly vision has molded the entire
tenor and development of the life.
But in cases where the divine purpose is not so clearly
disclosed, in which life is necessarily lived piecemeal, and
the bits of marble for the tessellated floor are heaped to
gether with no apparent plan, we must dare to believe that
God has an intention for each of us, and that if we are
true to our noblest ideals we shall certainly work out the
divine pattern and be permitted some day to see it in its
unveiled symmetery and beauty. Perhaps the noblest aim
for any of us is to realize that word which, according to
the margin of the Revised Version, was addressed by God
to Jeremiah, when he said to him, " On whatsoever errand
I shall send thee, thou shalt go; and whatsoever I shall
command thee, thou shalt speak."

20 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
To run errands for God ! To be like the angels that
excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening to
the voice of his word! To resemble the boy messengers in
some of our large cities, that wait in readiness to discharge
any commission that may be intrusted to them ! To know
that your message is as certainly given you as the letter
which is placed under the wing of the carrier-pigeon !
To go on occupying the position in which we have been
placed by the providence of God, but to hold it for God
till he bids us do something else ! Such are golden secrets
of blessedness and usefulness.
II. Formative Influences. — // is very interesting to
study the formative influences that were brought to bear on
the character of Jeremiah. There were the character and
disposition of his mother, and the priestly office of his
father. There was the picturesque beauty of his birth
place, the village of Anathoth, lying on the highroad three
miles north of Jerusalem, encircled by the famous hills of
Benjamin, and looking down the ravine on the blue waters
of the Dead Sea, gleaming at the foot of the purple hills
of Moab. There was the near proximity of the Holy City,
rendering it possible for the boy to be present at all the
holy festivals, and to receive such instruction as the best
seminaries of instruction could provide. There was the
companionship and association of godly families, which still
preserved the religion of their forefathers, and treasured as
sacred relics the literature, psalms, and history of our purer
and better days. There were also the prophets Nahum and
Zephaniah, who were burning as bright constellations in
that dark sky, to be soon joined by himself.
His mind was evidently very sensitive to all the influ
ences of his early life. His speech is saturated with refer
ences to natural emblems and national customs, to the life

"/ FORMED THEE" 21
of men, and the older literature of the Bible. Take, for
instance, his earliest sermon, in which he refers to the story
of the Exodus, and the pleadings of Deuteronomy ; to the
roar of the young lion, and the habits of the wild ass; to
the young camel traversing her ways, and the Arabian of
the wilderness ; to the murmur of the brook, and the hew
ing of the cistern. His quick and sensitive soul eagerly
incorporated the influences of the varied life around him,
and reproduced them. Many fabrics were woven into the
texture of his mind. Many flowers mingled their perfume
in the inclosure of his heart. Many chords made up the
music of his speech.
It is thus that God is ever at work, forming and molding
us. Whenever you are called to pass through an experi
ence which is unusually trying and difficult, comfort your
self by the thought that you are being fitted for some high
purpose that has not yet been made known, but which will
lay its demand on that very experience which has been per
mitted for that end. And as you look back on your life,
you will see how all has been ordered to fit you to fulfill a
ministry to others that would have been less worthily ful
filled had you been excused from the tears, the hardships,
the privations of a single day. The plan of God threads
the maze of life. The purpose of God gives meaning to
many of its strange experiences. Be brave and trustful!
If he serves himself of thee, he will recompense thee.
He is not unfaithful to forget.
There is a striking illustration of this in one of the clos
ing scenes of Joseph's life. Speaking to his brethren of
the pit and the afflictions to which it led, he said, "Ye
meant it for evil ; but God meant it for good" (Gen. 1. 20).
Standing on the eminence of the years, he was able to read
God's meaning in that dark and mysterious providence.
And if he had been asked to state his view of the divine

2 2 JEREMIAH, "PRIEST AND -PROPHET
reason in the trials and hardships of those early days, fast
fading behind the mist of years, he would probably have
answered, " God was forming me for my future ; prepar
ing me for what he had prepared for me ; disciplining and
equipping me for the position that awaited me ; and there
is no single incident in all those weary years through which
I passed that I could have dispensed with, except at a seri
ous disadvantage to my present standing."
III. There was also a Special Preparation and As
surance for his Life-work. — "The Lord put forth his
hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me,
Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth." In a similar
manner had the seraph touched the lips of Isaiah years be
fore. And we are reminded that the Lord Jesus promised
that the Spirit of the Father should put appropriate words
into the lips of his disciples when summoned before the
tribunals of their foes. Words are the special gift of God.
They were the endowment of the Church at Pentecost.
And it is always an evidence of a Spirit-filled man when
he begins to speak as the Spirit gives him utterance.
God never asks us to go on his errands (i. 7) without
telling us what to say. If we are living in fellowship with
him, he will impress his messages on our minds, and en
rich our life with the appropriate utterances by which those
messages shall be conveyed to our fellows. Do any read
these words who, like Moses, lack this royal endowment —
their words fall pointless and dead? Let them offer their
lips to speak, not with the wisdom of human words, or with
the grace of human eloquence, but with the power and
demonstration of the Holy Ghost; and their appeal will
not be denied. If only God's glory be our object, God's
hand will be put forth to touch our mouth, and he will
leave his words there.

"/ FORMED THEE" 23
Two other assurances were also given: First, "Thou
shalt go to whomsoever I shall send thee." This gave a
definiteness and directness to the prophet's speech. Sec
ondly, " Be not afraid because of them, for I am with thee
to deliver thee, saith the Lord " — an assurance which was
remarkably fulfilled, as we shall see in the unfolding of
this narrative.
These are marvelous words, spoken to us all, as God
sends us on a mission or errand into the world. It may
be of greater or less consequence — to rule an empire or
nurse a single babe ; to be an apostle or to care for a few
sheep in the wilderness. But we are no less sent than Jesus
was from the bosom of the Father — sent to learn, sent to
suffer, sent to achieve ; sent on an errand as Joseph was
from the patriarchal tent.
And just as long as we are on the prepared path, per
forming the appointed mission, he is with us. We may
defy death. We bear a charmed life. We are more than
conquerors. The music of his voice sounds in our heart,
though defaming and terror are on every side (xx. 10).
Men may fight against us, but they cannot prevail, for the
Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge
(i. 19).
IV. Lastly, God Vouchsafed a Twofold Vision to
his Child. — On the one hand, the swift-blossoming almond-
tree assured him that God would watch over him and see
to the swift performance of his predictions ; on the other,
the seething caldron, turned toward the north, indicated
the breaking out of evil. So the pendulum of life swings
to and fro, now to light and then to dark. But happy is
the man whose heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. He
is hidden in the secret of God's pavilion from the strife of
tongues, and abides in the secret place of the tabernacle

24 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
of the Most High. Men may fight against him, but shall
not prevail against him ; for he is encircled in the environ
ing care of Jehovah. As he spake to Jeremiah, so he ad
dresses us : " They shall fight against thee ; but they shall
not prevail against thee ; for I am with thee, saith the
Lord, to deliver thee" (i. 19). "Man is immortal till his
work is done."
There was a period in Jeremiah's life when he seems to
have swerved from the pathway of complete obedience
(xv. 19), and to have gone back from following the God-
given plan. Surrounded by contention and strife, cursed
as though he were a usurer, reproached and threatened
with death, he lost heart and fainted in the precipitous
path. And immediately he had good reason to fear that
the divine protection had been withdrawn. We are safe
only when we are on God's plan. But as he returned again
to his allegiance, these precious promises were renewed, and
again sounded in his ears: "I will make thee unto this
people a fenced brazen wall : and they shall fight against
thee, but they shall not prevail against thee : for I am with
thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord. And I
will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will
redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible."

III.
(tistern-making. (Jeremiah ii. 13.)
" Attempt, how vain —
With things of earthly sort, with aught but God,
With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love —
To satisfy and fill the immortal soul!
To satisfy the ocean with a drop ;
To marry immortality to death ;
And with the unsubstantial slave of time
To fill the embrace of all eternity."
Pollok's " Course of Time."
THERE was probably but little interval between Jere
miah's call and his entrance upon his sacred work.
When once the Spirit of God has established a code of
communications between himself and the soul whom he
has selected to be his mouthpiece, he is likely to avail
himself of it constantly. The difficulty is to lay down the
wire through the ocean depths ; but when it is there, the
messages flash to and fro repeatedly. So we are told that
to this young ardent soul "the word of the Lord came"
(ii. 1). Coming, it thrilled him.
He dwelt but lightly on the ominous mention of the in
evitable conflict which the divine voice prognosticated.
He did not stay to gauge the full pressure of opposition
indicated in the celestial storm-signal. He had been told
that kings and princes, priests and people, would fight
2S

26 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
against him ; but in the first blush of his young faith he
thought more of the presence of Jehovah, who had prom
ised to make him " a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and
brazen walls against the whole land." How tenderly God
veils our future, and leads us forward step by step ! But
there is a difference between the elastic hopefulness of
youth and the experience of manhood. The earlier chap
ters of Jeremiah differ from his Lamentations, as the first
green of spring from the sere foliage of autumn.
As we study the words and deeds of this most human of
prophets, let us pass through his plaintive cries and tears
and prayers, to that Divine Man, whose gentle spirit was
so closely anticipated and reflected in that of his servant.
In every age he is at work through his servants, striving
against sin in every form, and seeking to set up his reign
of righteousness, peace, and joy. In Jeremiah's words we
have his vehement beseechings and remonstrances ; in
Jeremiah's prayers we have echoes of the unutterable in
tercessions of the Holy Spirit ; in Jeremiah's conflicts we
have the divine antagonism against flesh and blood and
the rulers of the darkness of this world; in Jeremiah's
Lamentations we have the divine grief over human willful
ness. This priest and prophet of the Jerusalem of David
and Solomon had a remarkable course to pursue, in pre
senting in the obscure mirror of his life the cross and sor
row of the true Priest and Prophet of the restored Jeru
salem. I. The Prophet's Twofold Burden. — When Jeremiah
began his ministry, going from Anathoth to Jerusalem for
that purpose (ii. 2), Josiah, though only twenty-one years
of age, had been for thirteen years on the throne. He
was commencing those measures of reform which availed
to postpone, though not to avert, the doom of city and

CISTERN-MAKING 27
nation. His measures were as drastic as those of Crom
well and his soldiers in their determined effort to remove
every vestige of popery from churches and public build
ings. " They brake down the altars of the Baalim in his pres
ence ; and the sun-images, that were on high above them,
he hewed down ; and the Asherim, and the graven images,
and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust
of them, and strewed it upon the graves of them that had
sacrificed unto them. And he burned the bones of the
priests upon their altars, and purged Judah and Jerusalem"
(2 Chron. xxxiv. 4, 5, r.v.).
There must have been a great cawing among the rooks
when the trees in which they had so long nested were felled.
For seventy years the grossest forms of idolatry had held
almost undisputed sway. The impious orgies and degrad
ing rites which licensed vice as a part of religion were in
harmony with the depraved tastes of the people. What,
therefore, ecclesiastics and their flocks felt toward Henry
VIII. when he demolished the monasteries, and toward the
Protector when his officers pursued their work of devasta
tion, must have found ready place in those early years of
Josiah's reign.
The result was, first, that the work of reform was largely
superficial. It did not strike beneath the surface, or change
the trend of national choice. And secondly, this policy
compacted together a strong political party determined to
promote a closer alliance with Egypt, which, under Psam-
metichus, had just asserted her independence against the
king of Assyria. In these two directions the young prophet
was called to make his influence felt.
First, he protested against the prevalent sin around him.
The one thought of the people was to preserve the out
ward acknowledgment of Jehovah by the maintenance of
the Temple services and rites. If these were rigorously

28 JEREMIAH, PRIEST AND 'PROPHET
observed they considered that there was no sufficient cause
for charging them with the sin of apostasy. They insisted
that they were not polluted (ii. 23), and reiterated with
wearisome monotony, " The Temple of the Lord, The Tem
ple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, are these" (vii. 4).
It was Jeremiah's mission to show that mere outward
observance was worse than useless, and was compatible
with a real forsaking of God. Like the hectic flush, it
only concealed the corruption eating its way into the heart.
Like the flowers on the edge of the precipice, it hid the
fatal brink. Nominal profession is compatible with utter
atheism, and with the worst form of atheism, because the
heart parries every attack with the foil of apparent and
avowed belief.
This will account for the plain denunciations of sin that
came burning-hot from the lips of the young prophet.
He includes the priests and expounders of the law, pastors
and prophets, in his scathing words (ii. 8). The Valley of
Hinnom, with its obscene and cruel rites, is quoted in evi
dence against them (23) ; the blood of children flung into
the fires is detected on their robes (34) ; the trees of the
groves whisper what they have witnessed beneath their
shadow ; and the jagged rocks tell stories they dare not
conceal (20 ; iii. 6). Every metaphor is adopted that human
art can suggest to bring home to the people their infidelity
to their great Lover and Redeemer, God (iii. 20).
He also protested against the proposal to form an Egyptian
alliance. The little land of Canaan lay between the vast
rival empires founded on the Nile and the Euphrates,
much as Switzerland between France and Austria. It
was therefore constantly exposed to the transit of im
mense armies, like locusts destroying everything, or to the
hostile incursions of one or other of its belligerent neigh
bors. It had always been the policy of a considerable

CISTERN-MAKING 29
party at the court of Jerusalem to cultivate alliance with
Egypt or Assyria. In Hezekiah's and Manasseh's time
the tendency had been toward Assyria ; now it was toward
Egypt, which had in a remarkable way thrown off the yoke
which the great king Esarhaddon in three terrible campaigns
had sought to rivet on its neck. The prophet strenuously
opposed these overtures. Why should his people bind
themselves to the fortunes of any heathen nation whatso
ever? Was not God their King ? Would not he succor
them in times of overflowing calamity ? Surely their true
policy was to stand alone, untrammeled by foreign alli
ances, resting only on the mighty power of Jehovah, serv
ing his purposes, true to his law, devoted to his will.
" What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the
waters of Sihor [i.e., the black Nile] ? or what hast thou to
do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river ?
. . . Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy
way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast
ashamed of Assyria. Yea, thou shalt go forth from him,
and thine hands upon thine head: for the Lord hath re
jected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them "
(ii. 18, 36, 37).
This, then, was Jeremiah's mission — to stand almost
alone ; to protest against the sins of the people, which were
covered by their boasted reverence to Jehovah, whom they
worshiped as the tutelary deity of their land, besides many
false gods ; and to oppose the policy of the court, which
sought to cultivate friendly relations with the one power
that seemed able to render aid to his fatherland in the
awful struggle with the northern kingdom which he saw to
be imminent (i. 15). And this ministry was exercised in
the teeth of the most virulent opposition. Here was a
priest denouncing the practices of priests, a prophet the
lies of prophets. It was no light thing to expose the false-

30 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND PROPHET
hoods alike of priest and prophet, and accuse them of
healing the hurt of the daughter of his people slightly, say
ing, " Peace, peace," when there was no peace. Small won
der, therefore, that the most powerful parties in the state
conspired against him, as in after-days Pilate and Herod
joined hands against Christ.
II. The Imagery He Employed. — It is a scene among
the mountains. In that green glade a fountain rises icy-
cold from the depths, and pours its silver stream downward
through the valley. You can hear the music of its ripple,
and trace its course by the vegetation that follows it. It
is always flowing in abundance for young and old, for the
villagers in the hamlets, and when it has grown fuller and
broader for the inhabitants of large towns along its course.
But its banks are unvisited, neither cup nor bucket descends
into its crystal depths ; for all practical purposes it might
as well cease to flow.
Far away from that verdant valley you hear the clink
of the chisel, and presently discover people of every age
and rank engaged in making cisterns to supply their homes.
The bead-drops stand thick upon their brow, as from early
dawn to far on into the night they pursue their arduous toil,
wrestling with the stubborn granite. They will not avail
themselves of the materials of former times, nor utilize the
half-hewn cisterns deserted by their ancestors. Each man
has his own scheme, his own design. He toils at it when
spring casts her green mantle over the pasture-lands that
come to the edge of the quarry, and when the summer heat
makes the quarry like a kiln. While others are gathering in
the ruddy grape or golden corn, he remains constant to his
toil, and he is there amid the biting cold of winter. After
years of work he may achieve his purpose and complete
the cistern on which he has spent his years. He calls on

CISTERN-MAKING 31
his neighbors to view his accomplished purpose, and waits
expectant of the shower. Presently it descends, and he is
filled with pride and pleasure to think of the store of water
which he has been able to secure. But lo ! it does not
stay. As soon as it enters it passes out. There is a fatal
crack or flaw, or the stone is too porous. He finds what
every one of his neighbors has found, or will find, that with
the utmost care the cisterns wrought in the quarry can hold
no water.
What an infinite mistake to miss the fountain freely flow
ing to quench the thirst, and hew out the broken cistern in
which is disappointment and despair ! Yet this, said the
prophet, was the precise position of Israel. They had done
as no nation else, though search were made from the far
west of Chittim to the far east of Kedar. The heathen,
at least, were constant to their gods. False religions were
indigenous to the lands where they had originated — the
same idols worshiped, the same rites performed, the same
temples filled with succeeding generations. But the peo
ple of Jehovah had forsaken him as a maid might lay
aside her ornaments, or a bride her attire ; and in resorting
to false religions and heathen alliances they were hewing
out for themselves broken cisterns which would fail them
in their hour of need.
Very pathetically the prophet reminds them of the past.
The kindness of their youth, the love of their espousals,
their holiness to the Lord, and the song with which they
celebrated their deliverance on the shores of the Red Sea,
suggested a sad contrast to the evils that cursed the land.
Through him the voice of God is heard inquiring the rea
son of this lamentable apostasy. The chapter is full of
questions, as though God would elicit the charge upon
which they had deserted him. " What unrighteousness
have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from

32 JEREMIAH, 'PRIEST AND PROPHET
me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain ?
. . . Have I been a wilderness unto Israel ? a land of
darkness ? wherefore say my people, We are broken loose ;
we will come no more unto thee ? "
There is nothing sadder than the ebb of love, when we
are compelled to sit on the beach and watch the slowly re
ceding waters as they drop down from the high-water mark
which they had reached with the dancing wavelets. This
takes the light from the eye, and the spring from the foot.
Life can never again be quite as it was. The tide may
come up again ; but it will never efface the recollection of the
ebb, and the fear of its return. This in human experience
is something like the pain felt by the Eternal, as he saw
Israel, for whom he had done so much, turn from him
to strangers. Bitter, indeed, to hear them say to a stock,
" Thou art my father ; " and to a stone, " Thou hast brought
me forth." Their apostasy was to God as though a wife
should go from the husband that doted upon her, and be
come another man's (iii. i).
III. Its Application to Ourselves. — Many cistern-
makers may read these words — each with soul-thirst crav
ing satisfaction ; each within easy reach of God, whose
nature is as rock-water for those that are athirst ; but all
attempting the impossible task of satisfying the thirst for
the infinite and divine with men and things.
There is the cistern of Pleasure, embroidered with fruits
and flowers and bacchanalian figures, wrought at the cost
of health and rest ; the cistern of Wealth, gilded and inlaid
with pearls, like the mangers of the stud of Eastern kings ;
the cistern of Fame, hewn by the youth who tore himself
from the welcome of home and the embrace of human
love, to climb with his banner of strange device the unfre
quented solitudes of the mountain summit, far above all

CISTERN-MAKING 33
rivalry, and even companionship ; the cistern of Human
Love, which, however beautiful as a revelation of the Divine
Love, can never satisfy the soul that rests in it alone — all
these, made at infinite cost of time and pains, deceive and
disappoint. In the expressive words of Jeremiah, they are
"broken cisterns, that can hold no water." And in the time
of trouble they will not be able to save those that have
constructed and trusted them.
At your feet, O weary cistern-hewer, the fountain of
God's love is flowing through the channel of the Divine
Man ! Stoop to drink it. We must descend to the level
of the stream, if its waters are to flow over our parched lips
to slake our thirst. You have already dropped your tools,
and are weary of your toil. List to the music that fills
the air and floats around, like the chime of angel voices :
" Come back to God. Do the first works. Forsake the
alliances and idolatries which have alienated you from your
best Friend. Open your heart, that he may create in you
the fountain of living water, leaping up to eternal life.
. . . The Spirit and the bride say, Come ! And he that
heareth, let him say, Come ! And he that is athirst, let him
come : he that will, let him take the water of life freely."

IV.
®l)c Seronb SDieconrsc.
(Jeremiah iii.-vi.)
" Surely the time is short,
Endless the task and art,
To brighten for the ethereal court
A soil'd, earth-drudging heart:.
But He, the dread Proclaimer of that hour,
Is pledged to thee in Love, as to thy foes in Power." Keble.
WE do not know how Jeremiah's first address was re
ceived. It was impossible for Jerusalem to have
heard the eager pleadings of the young preacher, protesting
so earnestly against the policy of its leaders and the prac
tices of its priests, without becoming aware that a new
force had entered the arena of its public life. And from
that moment, through the forty-four years that followed,
the influence of his holy example and fervent words was
destined to make itself mightily felt. One star of hope
more shone over that hotbed of corruption, the very atmos
phere of which was charged with symptoms of impending
dissolution. Another voice was audible through which
God could utter his pleadings and remonstrances.
In his second discourse, lasting from the third to the
sixth chapters inclusive — and which perhaps is preserved
as a specimen of Jeremiah's words at this period — there is
an added power and pathos. The flame burns higher ; the
34

THE SECOND DISCOURSE 35
sword has a keener edge ; yet the tone is more tremulous
and tender. There is more than ever of the spirit of Jesus,
bewailing the blindness and obstinacy of men, as the vision
of impending judgment looms clearer before the soul, and
the violence done to the redeeming love of God is more
clearly apprehended. In his own touching words, Jeremiah
was as a gentle lamb led to the slaughter (xi. 19) ; but he
was also strong as a lion, in the vehemence with which he
strove to avert the doom, already gathering on the hori
zon, and threatening to devastate his beloved fatherland.
If any pure and holy soul could have saved Judah by
its pleadings, tears, and warnings, Jeremiah would have
done it.
But it was not to be. The upas had struck its roots
too deeply. The ulcer was too inveterate. The evil that
Manasseh had sown had too thickly impregnated the soil.
This, however, did not appear in those early days of Jere
miah's ministry, and with all the hopefulness of youth he
thought that he might yet avert the disaster. Surely a voice
warning of the rocks that lay direct in the vessel's course,
and a firm hand on the tiller, might yet steer the good ship
into calm, deep water.
This discourse is occupied with a clear prevision of the
Chaldean invasion ; with plaintive expressions of pity and
pain, and eloquent assertions of the redeeming grace of
God. I. The Prophet's Prevision of Approaching Judg
ment. — At the opening of Jeremiah's ministry, as we have
seen, the land was rejoicing in a brief parenthesis of peace,
like a glint of light on a mountain side in a cloudy and
dark day. It was a welcome contrast to the experience
of the previous centuries. And it appeared probable that
it might last. The mighty empire of Assyria was weak-

36 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND -PROPHET
ened by internal dissension ; Babylon was becoming a for
midable rival of Nineveh ; the Medes, under Cyaxares, were
beginning to descend the western slopes of the Taurus ;
while in Egypt Psammetichus was too deeply engaged in
expelling the Assyrian garrisons, consolidating his king
dom, and founding his dynasty, to have leisure or desire
to interfere with the tiny neighboring kingdom.
Thus Josiah was able to pursue his reforms in peace, and
there was no war-cloud on the horizon. It was on one of
these days of Josiah the king (iii. 6) that the newly ap
pointed prophet startled the men of Jerusalem and Judah
as he made known what he had seen on his watch-tower.
He had heard the trumpet summoning the peasantry from
the open country to the fenced cities, leaving their crops
at the mercy of the invader, to save their lives. He had
descried the lion stealing up from his lair in the thicket to
destroy the nations. He had caught the cries of the watch
ers from the northern heights of Dan to Ephraim, and so
to Jerusalem, as they announced the advent of the invader.
He had beheld the desolation of the land, the hurried re
treat of the defenders of the Holy City herself, some to
thickets, and others to holes in the ragged rocks. Yes, and
he had seen the daughter of Zion gasping in the extreme
of her anguish, and crying, " Woe is me now ! "
So real was the whole scene to him that we find him
turning to his brother Benjamites, who had fled for shelter
to the metropolis, bidding them flee still farther south. He
beholds the preparations for the siege, and the chagrin of
her assailants that the evening shadows of declining day
interpose between them and her inevitable capture. He
describes the invader as a mighty and ancient nation, glean
ing Israel as men gather the last grapes into their basket ;
cruel and merciless as ravening wolves : their quiver a
sepulcher ; their sword a terror ; their charging cry hoarse

THE SECOND DISCOURSE 31
and deafening as the roar of the sea ; their chariots and
cavalry irresistible. The mere report of their deeds was
sufficient to induce in each hearer, as it were, the pangs of
travail (i. 15 ; iv. 6, 7, 16, 19 ; vi.9, 19, 21). And the words
of the young prophet were as fire to wood (v. 14).
It has been supposed that these words referred to the
invasion of the Scythians, who about this time poured in
countless hordes over western Asia. The cities of Nin
eveh and Babylon alone, because of their great strength,
escaped ; the open country was swept utterly bare ; all who
could not escape were barbarously massacred or carried
off as slaves ; villages and towns were turned into charred
and smoking ruins. But these barbarian hordes do not ful
fill the entire scope of the prophet's words. They do not
appear to have entered Palestine, but to have passed down
on the eastern or western frontier, skirting the territory of
Josiah, and driving the panic-stricken people to the shelter
of the larger cities, whence they traced the path of the in
vaders, lit by conflagrations kindled on their ruthless march.
It is better, therefore, to refer these ominous words to the
invasion of Judah by Babylon, which was to take place in
thirty years, but of which the people were amply warned,
that they might put away their abominations and return to
the Fountain of Living Waters.
II. His Plaintive Expression of Pity and Pain. —
The tender heart of Jeremiah was filled with the utmost
sorrow at the heavy tidings he was called to announce.
Throughout the book we constantly encounter the expres
sions of his anguish. True patriot as he was, it was hard
for him to contemplate the impending destruction of the
Holy City. The noblest traditions of his people were rep
resented in those cries which for a little demand our con
sideration.

38 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
"The sword," he says, "reaches to the soul." And again,
" My heart ! my heart ! I writhe in pain ! the walls of
my heart will break ! my heart groans within me ; I can
not keep it still" (iv. 19, free translation). He identifies
himself with his land, and it seems as though the curtains
of his own tents are being spoiled, as in a moment. He
struggles against uttering his message of judgment till he
can no longer contain himself and becomes weary with
holding in (vi. n). He addresses Jerusalem as the daugh
ter of his people, and bids her gird herself with sackcloth
and sit in ashes, mourning as for an only son (vi. 23). He
asks how he may comfort himself against sorrow, because
his heart faints within him (viii. 18). He wishes that his
head were waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he
might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of
his people (ix. 1). He wanders alone over the mountains,
weeping and wailing because the pasture-lands are dry, be.
cause the lowing of the cattle and the song of the bird are
hushed (ix. 10). " Woe is me ! " he exclaims ; " my wound
is grievous." He had no alternative than to announce the judgments
which he saw upon their way ; but there was a sob in the
voice that predicted them. So far from desiring the evil
day, very gladly would he have laid down his life to avert
it. The chalice of his life was full of that spirit which led
the Master in after-years to weep as he beheld the guilty
and doomed city. Many a great preacher of repentance,
in all the centuries of church history, has known something
of this bewailing. Side by side with vehement denuncia
tions of coming judgment there has been the pitiful yearn
ing over lost men.
We need more of this. Nothing is so terrible as to utter
God's threatenings against sin, which are predictions of its
natural and inevitable outworking, with no sign of anguish

THE SECOND DISCOURSE 39
or regret. If we are called to speak of judgment to come,
it should be after hours of solitary prayer, weeping, and
soul travail. It is only in proportion as we have felt for
sinners that we can warn them. It 'is only in so far as we
have known the Saviour's pity that we can dare to take up
the woes he pronounced against Pharisee and Sadducee, or
threaten the fate which he so clearly and awfully denounced.
Our mistake is in dealing with generals and not with
particulars ; or in using terms which have passed from hand
to hand, until their inscription is worn away. We have
not realized the loss of one soul, or the unutterable woe of
hell for one apostate, or the meaning of the undying worm
and the unquenched flame. And probably the best way
of entering into the meaning of any of these terrible con
ceptions is to try and realize what they would mean for
any one soul who was dear to us as life. Then from the
one we may pass to the many ; from the one lost soul we
may understand the meaning of a lost world. Let us look
at these things from the standpoint of the Saviour, or of a
parent's love, or of the soul itself ; and when thoughts have
saturated our hearts of the dishonor done to God, the loss
sustained by Christ, the anguish wrought into the texture
of one disobedient life, we shall be able to speak to men
of the judgment to come, with streaming tears, tremulous
voice, and breaking heart. Such preaching will always be
a convincing and irresistible argument to turn sinners from
the error of their ways. Nothing is more awful than to
speak of the great mysteries of life and death, of heaven
and hell, of the right and left of the Throne, without that
compassion of heart which is borrowed from close com
munion with the Saviour of the world.
III. His Assertion of Redeeming Grace. — Few of
the sacred writers have had truer or deeper views of the

40 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
love of God. It is to the earlier chapters of Jeremiah that
backsliders must always turn for comfort and assurance of
abundant pardon. The word backslide is characteristic of
this prophet.
-"To Jeremiah's thought sin could not quench God's love. It
may come in between man and wife, severing the marriage
tie and leaving the husband to divorce her whom he had
taken to be his other self ; but though our sin be more in
veterate and repeated than woman ever perpetrated against
man, or man against woman, it cannot cut off that love
which is from everlasting to everlasting. The clouds may
dim, but they cannot extinguish, the sun. Sin may hide
the manifestation of the love of God, but can never make
God abandon his love to us (Jer. iii. i).
The love of God goes forth in forgiving mercy. He only
asks that the people should acknowledge their iniquity and
confess to having perverted their way and forgotten then-
God. It were enough that they should accept the terms
of the confession which he himself suggested : " Behold, we
come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God ; " and he
assures them that though their sin and iniquity were sought
for there should be none found (iii. 22).
The love of God does not deal with us after our sins. He
gives showers immediately on repentance. He does not
keep his anger forever. He intervenes between us and
trouble, as the soft sand between the homes of men and
the yeasty, foaming ocean. He waits to receive us back,
saying, " If thou wilt return, O Israel, unto me, thou shalt
return." Ours may be the pleasant land ; ours the goodly
heritage ; ours the rest for the soul — all of which we have
forfeited, but all of which are restored to us when we
return. What true and delightful conceptions of the love of God
were vouchsafed to the young prophet ! Many similarities

THE SECOND DISCOURSE 4'
between his expressions and those of Deuteronomy suggest
that it was his favorite book, as, if we may venture to say
so, it was our Lord's ; and perhaps it was from that ancient
writing, then newly discovered, that he derived his inspira
tion. But, in any case, his living spirit had drunk deep
drafts of the everlasting, forgiving, pitiful love of God,
revealed and given to men in Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh,
blessed love ! —through which backsliding hearts may be
admitted again to the inner circle, and have restored the
years that the canker-worm has eaten.

V.
2U tljc Sample Ootcs.
(Jeremiah vii.-x.)
" Bewildered in its search, bewildered with the cry,
' Lo here, lo there, the Church! ' poor sad humanity
Through all the dust and heat turns back, with bleeding feet,
By the weary road it came,
Unto the simple thought, by the Great Master taught,
And that remaineth still :
Not he that repeatcth the Name,
But he that doeth the will." Longfellow.
WE must read the records given in the Books of the
Kings and Chronicles to understand the remark
able movement which was on foot during the time covered
by the first twelve chapters of the Book of Jeremiah. In
his collected words he scarcely refers to the great reforms
being introduced by his friend the King Josiah ; and he is
scarcely mentioned in the historical records. But there is
no doubt that he was in constant and close communication
with the king and the little group of earnest reformers that
clustered round his person, and which included Shaphan,
Hilkiah, the prophet Zephaniah, the prophetess Huldah,
and his own friend Baruch.
Josiah promoted measures of reform from the earliest
years of his reign ; but at first he was opposed by the dead
weight of national apathy to the cause he espoused. The
42

AT THE TEMPLE GATES 43
worship of idols — for which there are twenty different
terms in the Hebrew language — had so many fascinations
from the use of the peoples around, and from its appeals to
sensual passion, that the mass of the people had no desire
to revert to the more austere and purer worship of their
forefathers. Besides, had not Solomon the magnificent,
four hundred years before, erected on the southern slopes
of Olivet shrines to Ashtoreth, the goddess of Sidon, to
Chemosh and Milcom, the national gods of Moab and
Ammon ? The rites of heathen superstition were also
maintained by a vast herd of false prophets and priests,
who, like parasites, throve in the corruption of their time.
There was a fatal compact and collusion between the two
bodies which boded no good for the efforts of the zealous
band of reformers who gathered round the king, because
they appeared to give a divine sanction to the abomina
tions that were being perpetrated. A wonderful and hor
rible thing had come to pass in the land : the prophets
prophesied falsely, and the priests bare rule by their means,
and the people loved to have it so.
The cooperation of Zephaniah and Jeremiah was, there
fore, exceedingly valuable. While Josiah wrought from
without, pursuing a career of uncompromising iconoclasm,
they wrought from within, appealing to the conscience and
heart — here pleading the claims of Jehovah on the thought
less crowds; there taunting the idol-worshipers with the
futility of their reliance on the creations of their fancy ;
and again announcing the swift descent of national judg
ment on the national sins which were desolating the
country. But, notwithstanding their united efforts, the cause of
reform moved slowly, or might even have come to a stand
still — as an express-train when buried in an avalanche of
soft snow — had not the discovery made in the eighteenth

44 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
year of Josiah's reign given a new and unexpected im
petus to the ancient religion of Israel. And though it is
not exactly an incident in the life of Jeremiah, he was so
closely associated with the men who were principally con
cerned, and his third discourse is so evidently suggested
by the reforms to which it led, that we must briefly touch
on it.
I. The Finding of the Law. — At the time to which
this incident must be referred, the Temple was under re
pair. It sadly needed it, for the lewd emblems of idolatry
had been erected within its sacred precincts, and beside
them the dwellings of the wretched men and women asso
ciated with the impious rites permitted on the site where
David worshiped and Solomon spread his hands in sol
emn dedicatory prayer. Probably, also, the fabric was
showing signs of dilapidation and age, for two and a half
centuries had elapsed since it had been completely restored
by Joash.
The work was intrusted to the superintendence of Hil
kiah, the high priest, who was assisted by a little group of
Levites, and the cost was contributed by the people who
passed through the Temple gates. On one occasion the
king sent Shaphan, his secretary and chancellor, who was
the father of Gemariah and a good man — who afterward
defended Jeremiah (Jer. xxxvi. 10-19, 25) — to take an ac
count with Hilkiah of the money which had been gathered
by the doorkeepers. When they had attended to this im
portant business, and delivered the money into the hands
of the workmen that had the oversight of the work, Hil
kiah, the high priest, said unto Shaphan, the scribe, "I
have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord."
It was a very startling discovery. The rabbinical tradi
tion states that it was discovered inside a heap of stones,

AT THE TEMPLE GATES 45
where it was hidden when Ahaz destroyed all the other
copies of the holy books. Or it may have been hidden
away in the ark, which Ahaz may have removed to one
of the rooms of the Temple, where dust and lumber con
cealed it. There has been much discussion as to what
that roll of ancient MSS. contained, some holding that it
was the entire Pentateuch, others that it was the Book of
Deuteronomy. It has even been asserted by some that a
pious fraud was perpetrated on Josiah and his times by
some well-meaning individual, who had just written the
Book of Deuteronomy with his own hand, and now foisted
it on Hilkiah and the rest as a venerable production dat
ing from the days of Moses! To what miserable straits
they are reduced who would have us accept such wanton
speculations ! Let the critics betake themselves to the
examination of the ancient MSS., if they will. We thank
them for the facts they bring to light ; in their own prov
ince we give them credit for painstaking and erudition, but
we refuse to accept their theories. Let them give us the
facts, and we can formulate the theories for ourselves.
Even if it could be shown — which we hold it cannot — that
Moses was not the author of the Book of Deuteronomy, it
is surely utterly inconceivable that the mind through which
that sublime treatise was given to the world could have
been a party to a fraud so unblushing and scandalous as
to palm off its own offspring under the august sanction of
the name of Moses !
After careful thought, we are disposed to think that the
Book of Deuteronomy is specially referred to here, though
not to the exclusion of the other books of Moses. It seems
unquestionable that this portion alone of the Pentateuch
was ordained to be written out by each king on his acces
sion, and was read before the assembled congregation once
in each seven years. The terms of the covenant made

46 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
afterward by Josiah and his people are precisely those with
which the Book of Deuteronomy abounds ; and the phrases
which characterize it are perpetually recurring in the ad
dresses and appeals of Jeremiah. This book dyed his
speech, as it had done that of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and
Micah. Its discovery by Hilkiah made as great a sensation as
that of the Latin Bible by Luther in the library of the old
Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. Shaphan read parts of
it before the king, among them probably chapter xxviii.
" And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words
of the Book of the Law, that he rent his clothes." In hot
haste he sent a deputation of his most trusty friends to one
of the suburbs of the city, where the prophetess Huldah
dwelt. Jeremiah may have been at this time at Anathoth,
or he may have been too young in his work to be recog
nized as an authority in so grave a crisis. The question
to be asked was, whether the nation must expect to suffer
all the awful curses which those words predicted, and the
answer was an uncompromising " Yes," though their inflic
tion might be for a brief space postponed.
Forthwith the king summoned a mighty convocation of
all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and the priests and the prophets, and all the people, both
small and great, and, from a platform erected in the en
trance of the inner court, he read aloud all the words of
the book of the covenant which had been found in the
house of the Lord. And further, he solemnly renewed the
covenant between Jehovah and the people, that they would
walk after the Lord, and keep his commandments, his tes
timonies, and his statutes. Perhaps, as one commentator
suggests, an ox was slain, and the king and people passed
between the severed halves in witness of their solemn resolve.
Then the work of reform broke out afresh. The tide of

AT THE TEMPLE GATES 47
popular feeling rose high, and the reformers took it at its
flow. The black-robed priests were suppressed ; the em
blems of idolatry were cast out of the Temple, and burned
without the city ; the dwellings of the miserable votaries
of lust were destroyed, Tophet was defiled, and the high
places leveled to the ground. Thus, outwardly at least,
Israel became again true to- its allegiance to the God of
its fathers, and free from the taint of idolatry.
II. The Divorce between Religion and Morality.
— The influence of the court, the finding and reading of
the law, the splendid success of the great Passover which
Josiah instituted, the glow of the crusade against the old
idolatries, sufficed for a time to effect widespread reform.
and the fickle populace gave an outward adhesion at least
to the service of Jehovah. The Temple courts were
thronged ; the rites and forms of the Levitical code were
rigorously maintained ; every point of ceremonial allegiance
to the institutions of Moses was punctiliously observed.
But there was no real change in disposition. The refor
mation was entirely superficial. Beneath the fair exterior
the grossest forms of evil were seething in hideous cor
ruption, now and again breaking forth into the light of
day, but awaiting the death of Josiah, when they once
more asserted themselves.
Jeremiah was profoundly disappointed at the result of a
movement which had promised so well. He detected its
true character, and sought an opportunity of showing its
insufficiency to avert the wrath of God, which was gather
ing like a thunder-cloud upon the horizon. Taking up his
position in the gate of the Temple, on the occasion of some
great festival when the people of Judah were gathered with
the citizens of Jerusalem to worship Jehovah, he poured
forth a torrent of remonstrance and appeal.

48 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
He was not unaware of the attention paid by the nation
to outward ritual, which they mistook for religion. The
incense of Sheba, and the costly, fine-scented cane fetched
from Arabia or India, burned for the sake of their rich per
fume, stole through the Temple precincts (vi. 20). They
took care to speak of the Temple as the house of God,
and to stand before him as his people (vii. 10). The burnt-
offering and other sacrifices were rigorously distinguished
from one another, the priests and people feeding on those
parts alone permitted by the Mosaic ritual (vii. 21). It
was the boast of the people that the law of the Lord had
been committed to their charge, and that they had therefore
special claim upon his forbearance (viii. 8). And against
every accusation which the prophet laid at the nation's
door, they pointed to the order and beauty of the restored
ritual, of their splendid Temple, of their privileged condi
tion as the chosen people of God, and cried, " The Tem
ple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of
the Lord, are these."
But alongside of this outward decorum the grossest sins
were permitted with unblushing shame. One of the charges
which Jeremiah brings against his people is, that they had
lost the power of blushing (viii. 12). The shamefulness of
their sin was apparent in their shamelessness. They op
pressed the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. Theft,
murder, and adultery showed themselves in open day. S >
frequent and atrocious were their crimes of violence, that
they seemed transformed into a horde of robbers — tlvj
Temple their den ; lies flew from their tongues like arrows
from a bow ; and while men spake peaceably to their
neighbors in their ears, they were lying in wait to betray
them. Though idolatry had been overthrown in the high
places of the land, it lingered in the houses of the great,
who squandered their silver and their gold, their blue and

AT THE TEMPLE GATES 49
their purple, on the wood which they had shaped into the
fashion of a god.
There was an evident divorce between religion and
morals ; and whenever that comes into the life of a nation
or an individual, it is fatal. Satan himself has no objec
tion to a religion which consists in postures and cere
monies and rites. Indeed, he fosters it, for the soul of
man demands God and craves religion ; and it is the art
of the great enemy of souls to substitute the counterfeit for
the reality, to quiet the religious appetite with the shows
and effigies of the eternal and divine — much as a man
might satisfy his hunger with food that lacked the elements
of nutrition, while his strength and vigor were slowly ebb
ing away. It can never be too strongly emphasized that
the soul of man cannot rest or be content without God ;
but it is too apt to be cajoled with that which is not bread,
and which satisfieth not.
III. The Excuses beneath which the Soul of Man
Shelters Itself. — (i) Ritualism. — It was the old belief
that God was bound to help a nation or person that stead
fastly complied with the outward forms of religion, as if
he had no other alternative than to help his devoted wor
shiper. In one form or another this conception has ap
peared in every nation and age. " What more can God
want," the heathen cries, " than that I should give burnt-
offerings, and calves of a year old ; thousands of rams, and
ten thousands of rivers of oil ; my first-born for my trans
gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? "
" What more can God want ? " cries the formalist of our
time. " I was received into the visible church as soon as
I was born ; I have complied with all her regulations ; I
do my best to maintain her institutions and services ; in all
weathers I am present when her doors are open ; and there

50 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
is no demand made by her representatives to which I do not
comply to the best of my ability. What lack I yet ? "
The incessant remonstrance of the Bible is against such
protestations — whether expressed or understood — as these.
" What doth the Lord require of thee," says Micah, " but
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
thy God ? " (Micah vi. 8). " To what purpose is the multi
tude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord," is one
of Isaiah's earliest sentences, and he added, still speaking
in the name of God, " Incense is an abomination to me."
And here Jeremiah takes up the same strain. He says in
effect : " Put all your offerings together; abolish the sacer
dotal distinctions which Moses bade you observe ; relin
quish all ritual ; end festival and fast alike." These things
are comparatively indifferent to God, when substituted for
obedience and a holy walk (vii. 22).
Where the heart is right with God it will find fit and
proper expression in the well-ordered worship of the sanc
tuary. It will find the outward ordinance a means of
quickening the soul by the laws of association and expres
sion ; but the outward can never be a substitute for the in
ward. The soul must know God, and worship him as a
spirit. There must be faith, repentance, inward grace.
" God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must wor
ship him in spirit and in truth." Throughout the ages
he has been seeking such to worship him.
(2) Destiny. — Men often say, as the Jews did, "We are
delivered to do all these abominations ; we were made so ;
we are swept forward by an irresistible current which we
cannot control" (vii. 10). How many a man lays the
blame of his sin upon his Creator, alleging that it is only the
outworking of the natural tendencies with which he was
endowed ! How many a woman has laid the blame of
her unutterable fall upon the force of circumstances, which

AT THE TEMPLE GATES 51
held her in their grip ! And there are some religious fatal
ists who have gone so far as to trace their sins to the elec
tive decrees of the Almighty ! Whatever truth there may
be in the doctrine of predestination, it will not absolve
you from sin in the sight of God and his angels. There
is more than enough grace in God to counteract the drift
of the current and the strength of passion.
(3) Special Privilege. — Many a soul has presumed on
being a favorite of Heaven. " I am wise ; the law of the
Lord is with me. He needs me for the preservation of
his truth, the elaboration of his scheme. His cause is too
deeply involved with me for him to allow me to be a cast
away. I may do as I will, he will deliver." Ah, soul, be
ware ! thou art not indispensable to God. Before thou
wert he was well served ; and if thou fail him he will
call others to minister to him. See what he did to Shiloh
(vii. 14) and to Jerusalem. How bare the site; how woful
the overthrow ! " If God spared not the natural branches,
take heed lest he also spare not thee ! " Take heed lest
the kingdom of God be taken from you, and be given to
a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

VI.
(Elje Soul's " fttnen."
(Jeremiah xi. 5.)
" Whatso it be, howso it be, Amen!
Blessed it is, believing, not to see.
Now God knows all that is, and we shall then,
Whatso it be.
God's will is best for man, whose will is free ;
God's will is better for us, yea, than ten
Desires whereof he holds and weighs the key."
Christina Rossetti.
THE words of the prophet in chapter xi., verse 5 are full
of deep significance to every holy soul summoned to
stand between God and other men. They have also far-
reaching meaning for all who are passing through the divine
discipline in this strange and difficult life. Jeremiah was
conscious of the special current of divine energy which
was passing into and through his soul. The word had
come to him "from the Lord." This is one of three forms
of expression that he employs. Sometimes, " the word of
the Lord that came to Jeremiah ; " sometimes, " thus saith
the Lord ; " sometimes, as here, " the word that came to
Jeremiah from the Lord." Probably he felt that word as
a burning fire shut up in his bones, which he could not con
tain. He must needs give vent to it ; but when it has
passed his lips, and he has time carefully to consider it, he
answers the divine message by saying, "Amen, O Lord ! "
52

THE SOUL'S "AMEN" 53
There is something very sublime in this attitude. Jere
miah, as we have seen, was naturally gentle, yielding, and
pitiful for the sins and sorrows of his people. Nothing was
further from his heart than to " desire the evil day." In
these earlier stages of his ministry especially, it must have
been one long effort to stand by himself against the strong
current of popular feeling and patriotism which colored the
visions of the false prophets. And yet, as he utters the
terrible curses and threatenings of divine justice, and pre
dicts the inevitable fate of his people, he is so possessed
with the sense of the divine rectitude, so sure that God
could not do differently, so convinced that, judged by the
loftiest moral standards, the sins of Israel could not be
otherwise dealt with, that his soul rises up, and though he
must pronounce the doom of Israel, he is forced to answer
and say, " Amen, O Lord ! "
There is something like this in the history of the re
deemed Church. When God has judged her that did cor
rupt the world with her fornication, and has avenged the
blood of his servants at her hand, as the smoke of her de
struction arises, the blessed spirits who had been learning
the deepest lessons of divine love, at the very source and
fount of love, are heard crying, " Amen ; Halleluiah ! "
In each of these cases it is extremely interesting to see
how the sense of justly deserved and righteously incurred
judgment corrects the verdict of mere compassionateness,
and enables the most sensitive and gentle souls to acqui
esce in what otherwise had been resisted to the uttermost.
Beside these two instances we may place a third, in
which our Lord, in the same breath as he appealed to the
weary and heavy-laden to come to him, spoke of the mys
teries which were hidden from the wise and prudent, but
revealed to babes, and said, " Yea, Father, for so it was well-
pleasing in thy sight." "Yea" is close akin to "Amen."

54 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
"How many soever be the promises of God, in him is the
Yea : wherefore also through him is the Amen, unto the
glory of God through us " (Matt. xi. 26 ; 2 Cor. i. 20, r.v.).
I. The Soul's Affirmation. — (1) In Providence. — We
often seem to be traveling through a difficult piece of moun
tainous country in company with a strong, wise, and gentle
companion, who has undertaken to guide us to our des
tination. There are foaming torrents, black and hurrying,
which we have to ford at the imminent risk of being carried
off our feet ; there are darksome woods and forests, where
suns have seldom penetrated, and where wild beasts have
their lair ; there are paths paved with flints so sharp, and
slabs of rock so slippery, that progress seems impossible,
except at too great a cost ; there are long stretches of
dreary desert, where the glare blinds, the sunbeams cut like
swords, and the shadow of a tiny retem-bush provides a
grateful relief ; there are steep hills and paths so narrow
that there is hardly room to pass along the ledge of rock,
while the dark precipice waits to engulf. In earlier days
the soul started back horror-stricken ; in later ones we
pleaded for an easier, pleasanter path, and envied the lot
of others ; but now our life has become one long and deep
and constantly repeated " Amen " to the choice of Him
who goes beside us, and in whose mind each step has been
previously conceived.
Let us guard against mistake. It is not possible at
first to say " Amen " in tones of triumph and ecstasy.
Nay, the word is often choked with sobs that cannot be
stifled, and soaked with tears that cannot be repressed. So
it was with Abraham, when he tore himself from Ur of the
Chaldees, and waited weary years for his son, and climbed
with aching heart the steep of Moriah. And as these
words are read by those who lie year after year on beds of

THE SOUL'S "AMEN" 55
constant pain ; or by those who have lost the enjoyment of
the presence of their twin soul ; or by those whose earthly life
is tossed upon the sea of anxiety, over which billows of care
and turmoil perpetually roll, it is not improbable that they
will protest as to the possibility of saying " Amen " to God's
providential dealings, or they will ask, Of what avail is it
to utter with the lip a word against which the whole heart
stands up in revolt? Is it not, it may be asked, an im
piety, a hypocrisy, to say with the mouth a word that is so
alien to the sentiments of the heart ?
In reply, let all such remember that in the garden our
blessed Lord was content to put his will upon the side of
God. What though his body were covered with the dew
of anguish, pressed out from it as the juice of the grape
by the tread of the husbandman ! He did not chide him
self. He knew it was enough if, in the lower parts of the
earth to which his human nature had descended, he was
able unflinchingly to affirm, " I delight to do thy will, 0
my God ; " " Not as I will, but as thou wilt."
Dare to say " Amen " to God's providential dealings.
Say it though heart and flesh fail ; say it amid a storm of
tumultuous feeling and a rain of tears ; say it though it
shall seem to be the last word that shall be spoken because
life is ebbing so fast : and you will find that if the will
doth acquiesce, the heart comes ultimately to choose ; and
as days pass, some incident, some turn in the road, some
concurrence of unforeseen circumstances, will suddenly flash
the conviction on the mind and reason that God's way was
right, the wisest and the best. " What thou knowest not
now, thou shalt know hereafter," is the perpetual assurance
of the Guide ; and this is realized not in the world of the
hereafter only, but here and now, on the hither side of the
Gate of Pearl.
(2) In Revelation there are mysteries which baffle the

56 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
clearest thinkers, the most profound theologians, the Johns
and Pauls of the Church; paths that lose themselves in
mere tracks on the moor; snatches of music and color
which no mortal genius can work out; suggestions of
movements in the spiritual world which defy the appre.
hension of the subtlest and greatest of the sons of men to
follow. The man that tracks God's footsteps loses them
in the depths ; and the eye that pursues his workings is
dazzled by a light above the brightness of the sun ; and
the argument breaks off with the cry, " O the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God !
how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past
finding out ! " It must be so while God is God. We are
partakers of his nature, as a child is of his father's ; but
the distance between our capacity of intelligence and the
thoughts of God is not measured even by that between the
dawn of a child's mind and the full splendor of his father's
power, because this moves in the region of the finite, while
that is a difference between the finite and infinite. We
cannot by searching find out God, or know the Almighty.
There is no fathoming-line long enough, no parallax fine
enough, no standard of mensuration, though the universe
itself be taken as our unit, by which to measure God.
High as heaven, what canst thou do ? Deep as hell, what
canst thou know ?
But though we cannot comprehend, we may affirm, the
thoughts of God. That we cannot understand is due to
the immaturity of our faculties. We are in our nursery
stage : our words are the babblings of infancy ; our ideas
the thoughts of a child. But we can accept, and admit,
and acquiesce in, and affirm the things which eye could
not see, nor the heart conceive, but which are revealed on
the page of Scripture.
There is no doubt that the death of Jesus Christ has

THE SOUL'S "AMEN" 57
fully met the demands of divine law ; and though some
phases of his Atonement may at times perplex us, yet our
soul confidently exclaims, "Amen, Lord!" We are igno
rant why God chose us ; how Christ could combine in him
self the natures of God and man ; or in what manner the
Holy Spirit regenerates the soul. " How can these things
be?" is the question which often occurs to the devout stu
dent of revelation. But when He who has come straight
from the realms of eternal day steadfastly affirms that
which he knows, and bears witness to what he has seen,
we receive his witness and say reverently, "Amen, Lord!"
(3) In Judgment. — God's judgments on the wicked are
a great deep. The problems that encircle the question of
present or future punishment are among the deepest and
most awful that the mind of man can approach. Like
Moses, we fear and quake when we climb the storm-girt
sides of Sinai, and hear the pealing, thunderous curse, to
be followed by the lightning flash of fiery indignation de
vouring the adversary. We may well turn aside from such
considerations, and ask if the time can ever come when we
shall be able to consider with equanimity the awful suffer
ing which they must incur who have rejected the love of
God in Christ. Will heaven have any bliss to us so long
as there is a hell ? Will there be any possibility of happi
ness while one sheep is lost, one link absent in the bridal
necklet, one stone deficient from the regalia, one voice
missing in the chorus ? A partial answer at least is given
to these inquiries when we hear from the lips of the most
gentle of the prophets, anticipating the destruction of his
people, for which his eye was to trickle down with tears,
" Amen, Lord ! "
At present we cannot expect to attain to much of this
condition of mind and heart, because our views of the
divine rectitude are so imperfect, our estimate of sin is so

58 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
slight, our knowledge of the conditions of the universe so
inadequate. Did we know more of sin, of holiness, of the
love of God, of the yearning pleadings of his Spirit with
men, of the all-sufficiency of the measure he has taken for
their arrest and salvation, of the barriers erected to stay
the precipitate downward course of the wicked, we should
probably understand better how Jeremiah was able to say,
"Amen, Lord !"
There is a striking thought in Ezekiel xiv. 22, 23, in
which God says that when we see the way and the doings
of sinners in the light that shall be flung upon their entire
life-course from the great white throne, we shall be com
forted concerning the evil that he shall have brought upon
them. And the prophet goes on to show that God will
make us know that he has not done in vain anything that
he shall have done. That era has not yet broken, but it
is a wonderful conception of the comfort and resignation
which the added light of eternity shall bring into hearts
perplexed and anxious as they consider the fate of the un
godly. Abraham shall be comforted over the destruction
of the cities of the plain ; Jeremiah shall be comforted as
he reviews the fate of Jerusalem ; and Paul shall be com
forted as he considers the long alienation of the seed of
Abraham from their land, and their exile with wandering
foot and terror-stricken heart in all the countries of the
world. And we shall be comforted as we behold the de
struction of the wicked.
II. The Ground of the Soul's Peace. — "Yea,
Father ! " It may seem at first sight as though it were
impossible that the heart of man could ever be induced to
acquiesce in the terrible and difficult matters touched upon
in the previous paragraphs. As long as mothers love the
sucking child, and have compassion on their sons ; as long

THE SOUL'S "AMEN" 59
as soul is wedded to soul by the strongest and most tena
cious bonds of human love ; as long as we can suffer,
yearn, fear, hope, pity ; while memory keeps the records
of the past, and love reigns, and the mind holds her seat,
it might seem the impossible dream of the imagination that
what appears incompatible with the tender human feeling
can be consistent with the love of God. " Surely," you
cry, " there are things to which I can never assent, decis
ions I can never reaffirm, sentences I can never counter
sign, possibilities to which I can never say, ' Amen, Lord ! ' "
But does not this protest of the soul arise from the fact
that you have judged such things from the standpoint of
pure emotion, or human reasoning, or perverted principles
of human action, and that you need to stand in the sanc
tuary of God, which is the focus and metropolis to which
the loftiest intelligences converge, in order to come in con
tact with the lofty morality and legislation of eternity ?
And do we not wrongly think that our love is more tender,
our sympathy more delicate, our compassions deeper, than
those of the Father ?
When tried and perplexed with the troubles of life, turn
from these, which will make the brain dizzy and the heart
sick, and consider the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
from whom every ray of love in the universe has emanated,
and remember that nothing can be permitted or devised
by him which is not consistent with the gentlest and truest
dealings that an earthly father could mete out to the child
of his right hand, his Benjamin, the darling of his old age.
So shall you be able to say, "Amen, Lord !"
When face to face with the mysteries of the Atonement,
of Substitution and Sacrifice, of Predestination and Elec
tion, of the unequal distribution of gospel light, be sure to
turn to God as the Father of light, in whom is no dark
ness, no shadow of unkindness, no note inconsistent with

60 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
the music of perfect benevolence. He is your Father, the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father from whom
every home life receives its tenderest touches. Dare to
trust him, and in the strength of that trust to say, " Amen,
Lord ! "
When peering over the strong barrier of redemption that
intervenes between you and the dark fate of the ungodly,
when thoughts will force themselves upon the spirit, as the
cry of the insurgent mob might penetrate the sacred seclu
sion of a temple, look away from this and gaze into the
face of the Father, which is turned in the same direction,
and dare to believe that nothing can happen in heaven or
earth or hell which is out of harmony with the love that
has inspired parents toward their children, that breathed
the love into Mary's heart as she clasped her Babe to her
bosom, or that yielded the Only-begotten to the horror of
the cross for man's redemption : so there shall be a new
tone in the voice of the soul that says, " Amen, Lord ! "
In other words, we must not look into the dark and per
plexing questions that seethe and boil like wreaths of vapor
around us. We must look up to the blue sky of undimmed
sunshine, our Father's heart. He must be love, beyond
our tenderest, deepest, richest conceptions of what love is.
In his dealings with us, with all men, and especially with
the lost ones, love is the very essence and law of his nature.
Somehow, we repeat it, everything must be consistent with
this all-persuasive nature and temper of the Divine Being ;
and in proportion as you dare to believe in the Father,
you will be able to say " Yes," which is a true rendering of
the Greek word in our version translated " Even so " (Matt.
xi. 26).
III. The Triumph of the Affirming Soul. — " Amen ;
Halleluiah ! " Jesus as he rested in his Father was able to

THE SOUL'S "AMEN" 61
say not only " Even so, Father," but " I thank thee,
Father " ; and so there shall come a day when the four
and twenty elders, representing the redeemed Church, shall
see the judgment of the great opponent of the Lamb's
bride and say, " Amen ; Halleluiah ! "
Mark the addition of "Halleluiah" to the "Amen."
Here the Amen, and not often the Halleluiah ; there the
two — the assent and the consent ; the acquiescence and the
acclaim ; the submission to the will of God, and the triumph
ant outburst of praise and adoration. Let us anticipate
that age when we shall know as we are known, and when
we shall be perfectly satisfied, perfectly jubilant, perfectly
blessed ; when every shadow of misunderstanding and mis
apprehension shall be dispelled, and we shall join in the
hymn of the redeemed Church : " Great and marvelous are
thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty ; righteous and true
are thy ways, thou King of the ages " (Rev. xv. 3, r.v.).

VII.
®ljc Smelling of Jorban.
(Jeremiah xii. 5.)
" But I, amid the torture and the taunting,
I have had Thee!
Thy hand was holding my hand fast and faster,
Thy voice was close to me :
And glorious eyes said, ' Follow me, thy Master,
Smile as I smile thy faithfulness to see.' "
Mrs. Hamilton-King.
BETWEEN the incidents referred to in our last chapter
and the subject of the present one, a most terrible
calamity had befallen the kingdom of Judah. In the face
of urgent remonstrances, addressed to him from all sides,
King Josiah led his little army down from the mountain
fastnesses, where he dwelt safely, to attack Pharaoh Necho,
who was marching up by the coast route to participate in
the scramble for the spoils of Nineveh, then in her death-
throes. The two armies met at Megiddo, at the foot of
Carmel, on the extreme border of the plain of Esdraelon,
which has so often been a decisive battle-field. The issue
was not long in suspense. Josiah's army was routed and
himself mortally wounded.
" Have me away ; for I am sore wounded," said the dying
monarch, and his servants bore him from his war-chariot
to another in reserve ; but he died, after a few miles' drive,
at Hadadrimmon. His death was the signal for such an
62

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 63
outburst of grief throughout the land that it became in
after-years the emblem of excessive sorrow. Zechariah
could find no adequate expression for the anguish of Jeru
salem when the people shall look on Him whom they pierced,
and mourn, than that it should be like "the mourning of
Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo," when the land
mourned, every family apart. It has been compared to
the grief of Athens when tidings came that Lysander had
destroyed her fleet, and to that of Edinburgh on the even
ing of Flodden. Jeremiah composed an elegy on the death
of his king and friend, which has not been preserved ; and
at once the fortunes of Judah were overcast with darkest
gloom (2 Chron. xxxv. 20-27 I Zech. xii. 11).
The next king, Josiah's son Jehoahaz, reigned but three
months, and then was led off with a ring in his nose, like
some wild beast, to Egypt, where he died. Necho insti
tuted his brother Jehoiakim in his stead, as his nominee
and tributary. But the four last kings of Judah reversed
the policy of Josiah. They did evil in the sight of the
Lord, and of Jehoiakim it is recorded that he wrought
abomination (2 Chron. xxxvi. 1-8).
At the death of Josiah the large party that favored idol
atry again asserted itself. The reformation promoted by the
good king had never struck its roots deeply in the land,
and the vigor with which he had carried out his reforms now
led to a corresponding reaction. The reformers fell under
the popular hate, much as the Puritans did in the days of the
Restoration, and Jeremiah especially came in for a large
share of it. He had been the friend and adviser of the late
king, and had not scrupled to denounce in the most scathing
terms the idolatry and licentiousness of his age. He had
uttered terrible predictions of coming disaster, which were
beginning to be fulfilled. There were the mutterings of a
coming storm of hatred and murder. Unbeknown to him,

64 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
his countrymen were devising devices against him, saying,
" Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us
cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may
be no more remembered."
The symptoms of this rising storm were less likely to
reach him, because he had been commanded to itinerate
among the cities of Judah, as well as the streets of Jeru
salem, and had probably started on a prolonged tour
throughout the land, standing up in the principal market
places, and announcing everywhere the inevitable retribu
tion that must follow on the breach of the divine covenant
(xi. 8). The issue of that tour was profoundly disappoint
ing. A conspiracy was found among the men of Judah
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They turned back to
the iniquities of their forefathers ; each city had its tutelary
deity, each street its altar to Baal. And the conviction
was wrought into the prophet's heart that intercession itself
was useless for a people so deeply and resolutely set on
sin. They had sinned the sin unto death, for which prayer
is in vain (xi. 14 ; 1 John v. 16).
Disappointed and heart-sick, Jeremiah retired to his native
place Anathoth. He was unsuspicious of danger, as a gen
tle lamb led to the slaughter. Surely among his brethren,
in the house of his father, he would be safe, and able to
find the sympathy and affection for which his sensitive
heart hungered, but which evaded him everywhere else.
But it was not to be. In this also he was to be like the
Lord Jesus, who came unto his own, but his own received
him not, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their
city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
There was treachery in the little village. The sacred tie
of kindred was too weak to restrain the outbreak of fanatic
hate. The priestly houses had winced beneath the vehe
ment denunciations of their young relative, and could bear

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN *5
it no longer. A plot was therefore set on foot, and under
the show of fair words they conspired to take the prophet's
life. He had not known of his danger but for divine illu
mination : " The Lord hath given me knowledge of it, and I
know it: then thou showedst me their doings" (xi. 18).
Stunned with the sudden discover}', Jeremiah turned to
God with remonstrance and appeal. Conscious of his own
rectitude and the rectitude of God, he was for a moment
caught in the outer circles of the whirlpool of questioning
which has ever agitated the minds of God's oppressed ones
concerning the unequal distribution of earthly lots. " Right
eous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee : yet
would I reason the cause with thee : Wherefore doth the
way of the wicked prosper ? wherefore are all they at ease
that deal very treacherously?" (xi. 20; xii. i,r.v.).
I. The Appeal of the Maligned and Persecuted
Soul. — (1) He was Conscious of his own Integrity. — With
out doubt Jeremiah was profoundly conscious of his un-
worthiness. He must have had as deep a conviction of
sinfulness as any of the great prophets and psalmists of
Israel. None could have lived as close to God as he did
without an overwhelming sense of uncleanness. What Job
felt, and Moses and David and Isaiah, must have been
constantly present to his consciousness also. But in re
spect to this special outburst of hatred he knew of nothing
for which to blame himself. He had not hastened from
being a shepherd, nor desired the woful day, nor taken
pleasure in the disasters he announced, nor spoken in the
heat of personal passion. The sins of the people had pro
cured the evils he predicted, and he had only sought to
warn the reckless mariners of the rocks that lay straight in
their course.
When we are reviled and hated, we should carefully

66 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
search our hearts to see if we have given any just cause to
those that hate and persecute us. The only suffering which
comes within the circle of Christ's beatitude is that which
is inflicted falsely, wrongfully, and for his sake. The man
who endures griefs, suffering wrongfully, alone can claim
to be following in the steps of the Master, and to be offer
ing a sacrifice which is acceptable to God. He only can
count on God's delivering aid.
The bursting storm should lead the captain to see that
there is peace among his crew, and amity with the other
ships of the fleet. We have no right to complain of the
wrong-doing of others unless we are sure that, so far as
we are concerned, we have given no just cause. But if
we have done so there is no option but to agree with our
adversary quickly, though it involve leaving our gift at the
altar. Every moment of delay aggravates the case and in
creases the difficulty of reconciliation. The course of jus
tice is so rapid, from the adversary to the judge, the judge
to the officer, and the officer to prison (Matt. v. 22-25).
(2) He was Perplexed ai the Inequality of Human Lot. —
Every word of good Asaph's complaint in Psalm lxxiii.
might have been appropriated by Jeremiah. He had never
swerved from the narrow path of obedience ; at all hazards
he had dared to stand alone, bereft of the comforts and
alleviations that come in the lot of men ; he did not scruple
to bare his heart toward God, knowing that to the limit of
his light he had done his bidding. But he was hated, per
secuted, threatened with death, while the way of the wicked
prospered, and they were at ease who dealt very treacher
ously. Surely it was in vain that he had cleansed his heart
and washed his hands in innocency. It was too painful for
him. His feet were almost gone, his steps had well-nigh
slipped. It is the question of all ages, to be answered only by re-

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 67
membering that this world is upside-down ; that the course
of nature has been disturbed by sin ; that the prince of the
power of the air is god of this world ; and that the servants
of righteousness fight, not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the
cbrkness of this world, the wicked spirits in heavenly
places. (3) He was Anxious for God's Character. — -There is a
touch of apparent vindictiveness in his cry. " Let me see
thy vengeance on them. . . . Pull them out like sheep for the
slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter." We
are disposed to contrast these words with those that Jesus
breathed for his murderers from the cross, and that Stephen
uttered as the stones crashed in upon him ; and we think
that there is an alloy in the fine gold, a trace of dross in
the saint.
It is possible to adopt the suggestion that the prophet
was predicting the fate of these wicked men, or that he
was the divine mouthpiece in this solemn pronouncement
of coming doom. But a deeper and more correct concep
tion of his words appears to be that he was concerned with
the effect that would be produced on his people if Jehovah
passed by the sin of his persecutors and intending murder
ers. It was as though the prophet feared lest his own
undeserved sufferings might lead men to reason that
wrong-doing was more likely to promote their prosperity
than integrity and holiness. Josiah was the one God-fear
ing monarch of his time, but he was slain in battle ; hi
was the devoted servant of God, and his life was one long
agony. Was it the best policy, then, to fear God ? Might
it not be wiser, safer, better, to worship the gods of the
surrounding peoples, who seemed well able to defend their
votaries, and to promote the prosperity of the great king
doms that maintained their temples? As Jeremiah beheld

68 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
the blasting influence of sin, how the land mourned and the
herbs were withered and the beasts and birds consumed,
his heart misgave him. He saw no limit to the awful evil
of his times so long as God seemed indifferent to its preva
lence. Therefore he cried for vengeance — not for the grati
fication of his own feeling, but for the sake of Israel.
(4) He also Rolled his Cause on God. — So might chapter
xi., verse 20 be rendered : " On thee have I rolled my
cause." Ah ! this was wise. And it is our only safety in
times of great soul anguish. The Divine Sufferer did this on
the cross. " Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again ;
. . . but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously."
In his steps we must plant our feet. When men malign
and plot against us, when friends forsake, when difficulties
like Atlantic breakers threaten to engulf us, we must roll
our anxieties from ourselves upon the blessed Lord, our
burden-bearer, and leave them with him. The care ceases
to be ours when it has been committed to him. He will
see to all for us with a love so strong and tender and true
that we need have no further cause for fear. Roll thyself,
thy burden, and thy way on the Lord.
II. The Divine Reply. — "If thou hast run with the
footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou
contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein
thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do
in the swelling of Jordan?" God stooped over his life
and said: "Do you not remember when I first called you
to be my prophet that I foreshadowed the loneliness and
isolation, the difficulty and persecution, which were in store?
Do you not remember that I told you that you would have
to be a brazen wall against the whole people ? Have you
already lost heart ? Are you so soon discouraged ? Has
the first brush of opposition mastered your heroic courage?

THE SWELLING OF JORDAN 69
You have as yet run with footmen, presently you will en
counter horses ; you are now in the land of comparative
peace, your native village, where those surround you who
have known you from your childhood, and yet you are dis
mayed ; but how will you do when a tide of sorrow comes
upon this land, as when the Jordan leaps its banks, and
swells over the low-lying land around, and drives the wild
beasts from their lair — how then? "
Does not God ever deal with us thus ? He does not
put us at once to contend with horses, but tests us first
with footmen. He does not allow any one of us with frail
and fainting courage to meet the overflowing floods of Jor
dan ; but he causes us first to be tested in our homestead —
the land of peace, where we are comparatively secure amid
those who know and love us. God graduates the trials of
our life ; he allows the lesser to precede the greater. He
gives us the opportunity of learning to trust him in slighter
difficulties, that faith may become muscular and strong,
and that we may be able to walk to him amid the surge
of the ocean. Be sure that whatever your sorrows and
troubles are at this hour, God has allowed them to come
to afford you an opportunity of preparation for future days.
Do not be discouraged or give up the fight, or be unfaith
ful in the very little. Do not say you cannot bear it. You
can! There is sufficient grace in him ; appropriate it, use it,
rest upon him. Be very thankful that he has given you
this time of discipline and of searching, and now, taking to
yourself all that he waits to give — the grace and comfort
and assurance — go forward ! He cannot fail you. What
he is in the lesser he will be much more in the greater.
The grace he gives to-day is but as a silver thread com
pared to the river of grace he will give to you to-morrow.
If you start back now you will miss the greater discipline

70 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
that will surely come, but in missing it you will also miss
the greafer revelation of himself that will accompany the
discipline. Be true to God ! Trust in God, and remem
ber that when he brings you to the swelling of Jordan —
not necessarily death, but some awful flood of sorrow —
that then, for the first time perhaps, you will meet the ark
and the Priest whose feet, when they dip in the margin of
the river, will cause it to part, and you will go over dry-
shod. When Jordan overflows its banks God brings his
chosen people to the brink, and it is then that he cleaves
the path through the heart of the river, so that they are
not touched by its descending torrent.
It is a solemn question. You have failed in the quiet,
sequestered home life : how will you do in the turmoil of
the city, with its terrific temptations ? You have suc
cumbed when there was everything to help you : how will
you do when all is against you? You cannot bear the
transient troubles of an hour with patience : how will you
do in those that wear the life out with ceaseless pain ?
You cannot live well : how will you do when the moment
arrives for you to die ? " If the righteous scarcely be saved,
where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ? "

VIII.
®ljc JDrottgl)t.
(Jeremiah xiv., xv.)
" If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit — of that we saw
Nothing ; to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm ;
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself ;
And at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand." Arnold.
THE reign of Jehoiakim was still young. Necho was
back in Egypt, Nineveh was tottering to her fall,
Babylon was slowly growing upon the horizon as the rival
of each great empire and as the future desolater of Judah.
Meanwhile the chosen people, like a tree whose heart is
eaten away with insects, were corrupted by innumerable
evils. As a premonition of coming destruction, and as
though the Almighty would make one last effort to arouse
them to the awfulness and imminence of their peril, a ter
rible drought cast its sere mantle over the land. It had
often been predicted among the other results of disobedi
ence, but probably never before had it fallen with such
desolating effect (Lev. xxvi. 20; Deut. xi. 17; xxviii. 23).
The whole land was filled with mourning. In the places
7i

7 2 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
of public concourse, where the people gathered in the
burning sunshine, they sat in black garments upon the hard
ground. Accustomed to rely upon the natural resources
of the country, nourished by the rivers and streams that
gushed from valley and hill, they were reduced to the
dire extremities of famine. The vines on the terraced
hills were withered, the cornfields were covered with stub
ble, and the pasture on the wolds was yellow and scorched.
The very dew seemed to have forsaken the land ; where
the river had poured its full tide there were only a few
trickling drops. The beds of the watercourses were filled
with stones. And the bitter cry of Jerusalem ascended,
made up of the mingled anguish of men and women and
children, whose parched lips might not be moistened.
The description given by the prophet is very striking.
Want is felt in the great houses of the nobles, who send
their servants for water without avail. The plowmen sit
in their barns with covered heads ; it is useless to think of
driving their plows through the chapped soil. The hind,
whose maternal love has passed into a proverb, is repre
sented as forsaking her young, that she may seek for grass.
The wild asses stand on the bare heights and eagerly snuff
up what breeze may pass over the land in the evening, to
relieve the agony of the fever of their thirst. All the land
bakes like an oven, and the sun, as he passes daily through a
leaden sky, looks down on scenes of unutterable horror.
What a picture is this of the desolation that sometimes
overtakes a Christian community ! Every faithful worker
could tell of periods when it has seemed as though the
cloud and dew of divine blessing had forsaken the plot on
which he was engaged. There are no tears of penitence,
no sighs of contrition, no blessed visitations of the dew of
the Holy Ghost, no fresh young shoots of piety, no joy in
the Lord, no fruits of the Spirit. Ah ! then work is hard

THE DROUGHT 73
and difficult, and the soul of the worker faints and is dis
couraged. Blessed is that church which has not known
this time of drought, and which has not experienced in
the spiritual sphere the counterpart of the utter failure of
moisture in the natural.
It is at such times that the lover of his fellows gathers
himself together to deal with the Almighty. You can see
him entering the secret place of the Most High, prepared
to speak with God, and, if possible, secure a mitigation of
the reign of the brazen sky and a return of those times of
blessing that can only come from the presence of the Lord.
His face is set with a resolute purpose. Through the weary
eyes the fire of a mighty resolution is burning. With his
two hands he is prepared to come to close dealings with
God, as Jacob when he made supplication with the angel.
Let us draw near and overhear the colloquy between Jere
miah and the Almighty. It may be that we shall discover
arguments that we may take upon our own lips when days
of drought are visiting the Church at large, or that sphere
of work in which we are called specially to labor. It is
thus that the soul discourses with God.
I. The Pleadings of the Interceding Soul. — " My
God, I come into thy presence to acknowledge my own
sin, and especially the sins of my people. I stand before
thee as their priest to confess the sins which have separated
between thee and them, incurring thy divine displeasure,
and closing the avenues of communion. Our iniquities
testify against us, and our backslidings are many. Once
thou seemedst to abide in our midst: thy smile a per
petual summer ; thy presence one long stream of benedic
tion ; thy grace like a river making glad thy city. But of
late thy visits have been few and far between. Thou hast
tarried for a night, and been away again at dawn, and we

74 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
sorely miss thee. Once thou wert as a mighty man, our
Samson, whose arm sufficed to keep our enemies at bay ;
but for long thou hast seemed overcome by an unnatural
stupor, by a paralysis that holds thee like a vise. And
yet thou hast not really changed. Thou art our Saviour ;
thou art in the midst of us. We bear thy name. Thine
honor is implicated in our lot. What thou couldst not do
for any merit of ours do for the credit of thy name ; do
for the sake of thy Son ; do for the maintenance of thy
cause upon earth. Leave us not, nor let that foreboding
prediction of Ezekiel be realized, when he saw the glory
of the Lord recede by stages from the holy place, until it
stood outside the city walls " (Jer. xiv. 7-9).
The Answer of the Divine Spirit. — There are times when
God seems to speak thus to the soul — if we may dare put
our impression of his words in our own phrase : " It is use
less, my servant, to pray. My grace is infinite ; my mercy
endureth forever ; my fullness waits to pour forth its tides,
to make the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. I
have no pleasure in the parched wilderness ; I would that
it were springs of water. I have no liking for the glowing
sand ; I would that it might become a pool. But so long
as men cling to their sins, so long as they perpetrate
abominations like those which Ezekiel saw when in the
chambers of imagery he beheld the elders of Israel offer
ing incense to creeping things and abominable beasts, it is
impossible for me to cause rain or give showers. Beneath
the appearance of religious worship and decorum, evils are
breeding that separate between my people and myself, and
hide my face from them. These must be dealt with. You
must begin to search the chambers of their hearts with
candles, to show my people their transgressions, and the
house of Israel their sins. Your work just now is not that
of the intercessor, but of the reformer ; not yet to plead

THE DROUGHT 75
with Elijah upon the brow of Carmel, but, like Elijah, to
extirpate the lurking evil of the people as when he dyed
the waters of Kishon with the blood of Ahab's priests"
(xiv. 10-12).
II. The Lament of the True Shepherd. — "Ah, Lord
God! True, too true, sadly too true, are thy words. Thy
people deserve all that thou hast said. Their iniquities are
alone accountable for their sorrows. But remember how
falsely they have been taught. The land is full of those
who hide thy truth under a cloud of words. They say that
the outward ritual sufficeth, howsoever far the heart is from
thee. There is grievous fault ; but surely it lieth at the
door of those who mislead the fickle, changeful crowd.
Their mouths are lined with wool ; they cry ' Peace, Peace ! '
when there is none. The very remonstrances of conscience
are drowned by their delusive assurances. Spare thy peo
ple ! they are scattered because the shepherds have failed
in their high commission " (xiv. 13).
77/.? Answer of the Divine Spirit. — There are days in the
history of the Christian when he is called to walk upon the
mountains of vision, and overhears the attendant shepherds,
of whom Bunyan speaks, talking to each other and saying,
" Shall we show these pilgrims some wonders ? " Beneath
their guidance he climbs to the top of the hill called Error,
which is very steep on the farther side. At the bottom lie
several men all dashed to pieces by a fall from the top.
" What meaneth this ? " is the obvious inquiry. " Have
you not heard of Hymenaeus and Philetus," is the reply,
" who erred concerning the faith of the resurrection of the
body ? These are they." So in our pleadings for men
we sometimes obtain a glimpse of the inevitableness of the
divine judgments and the irreparableness of the injury that
false teachers may do to their fellows. There is no fate

76 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
so terrible as of those who have not only erred themselves,
but have caused men to err ; who have been a stumbling-
block in the way of one of God's little ones. Better be
dumb and not able to speak than say words that may de
stroy the faith of childhood, or start questionings that may
shatter by one fell blow the construction of years. It was
in this strain that God replied to the prophet :
" The doom of the false prophets will be terrible. Their
fate will be the more awful because they have run without
being sent, and prophesied without having seen a vision.
There has been no divine impulse energizing their words.
Position, bread, power, have been the incentives of their
office ; but the people have loved to have it so. Their cor
rupt morals have produced a corrupt priesthood and a crop
of false prophets. The men of whom you complain are the
product of their times. My people, enervated with sloth,
luxury, and conceit, would not endure the simple truth of
the divine Word ; and this evil band have been bred and
nurtured in the stifling corruption of the age. Until, there
fore, the people themselves have put away their sin, and
returned to me in penitence and consecration, they must
be held guilty before my sight, and suffer the outworking
of their sin. ' I will pour their wickedness upon them ' "
(xiv. 14-16).
III. The Interceding Soul. — "Granted, great God,
that thou art just and right, yet thou canst not utterly re
ject. Thy smiting cannot be unto death. Thou must
heal. Thou mayest cast away those with whom thou hast
not entered into covenant relationship, or on whom thy
name has not been named, or among whom the throne
of thy glory has not been set up, but thou canst not
deal with us as with them. There is a tie between thee
and us which our sin cannot break. There are claims which

THE DROUGHT 77
we have on thee as our Father, which the far-country wan
derings of the prodigal cannot annul. There are interweav-
ings of thy character and prestige with our history which no
stroke of thy pen can dissolve. Remember the covenant ;
remember thy promise to thy Son ; remember thy bride
whom thou canst not put away ; remember that we have
no help but in thee ; remember the word on which thou
hast caused us to hope — therefore we will still wait upon
thee. We are not worthy to be called thine ; but we claim
the kiss, the robe, the fatted calf" (xiv. 17-22).
The Answer of the Divine Spirit. — It is as though the
Lord said : " I am wearied with repenting. I have tried
every means of restraining them and turning them to bet
ter things — now by winnowing out the chaff, and again
by bereavement and sorrow, and again by the swift destruc
tion of the sword. They have appeared to amend, but the
improvement was only superficial. Now my mind is thor
oughly made up. My methods must be more drastic, my
discipline more searching and thorough. I will turn my
hand upon my people, and thoroughly purge away their
dross, and take away all their tin, and I will restore their
judges as at the first and their counselors as at the begin
ning. Thus I will answer thy pleadings on their behalf.
The destruction of the city, the decimation of the people
by sword and famine, the awful sorrows of captivity, shall
act as purging fires, through which they shall pass to a
new and blessed life. Nothing else can now avail. For
my love of them I cannot spare them. The prayers of my
holiest cannot alter my determination, since only thus can
my eternal purpose of redemption be realized " (xv. 1-9).
IV. The Cry of the Intercessor. — Here the prophet
falls into a muse, and as he foresees the misrepresentation
of his motives, and the certain hate which his unfaltering

78 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
prediction of coming doom must excite, he wishes that he
had never been born. So does the heart of the man of God
fail, and if, like Jeremiah's, it is highly strung and keenly
sensitive, it becomes the prey of the deepest anguish. " Why,
O God, didst thou make me so gentle and sympathetic, so
naturally weak and yielding, so incapable of looking calmly
on pain ? Would not some stronger, rougher nature have
done thy bidding better ? Even now hast thou not some
man of ruder make to whom thou canst intrust this mis
sion ? There are skins more impervious to the scorching
heat than mine : may they not go into these flames ? Why
this stammering lip, this faltering heart, this thorn in my
flesh?" (xv. ro).
The Answer of the Divine Spirit. — " I will strengthen
thee for good." It is as if God said: " My grace is suffi
cient for thee. I have summoned thee, with all thy weak
nesses, to perform my will, because my strength is only
perfected thus. I need a low platform for the exhibition
of my great power. To those that have no might I impart
strength ; in those that have no wisdom I unfold my deep
est thoughts. The broken reed furnishes the pillar of my
Temple ; smoking flax gives light to my beacon-fires. Be
content to be a threshold over which the river passes ; be
satisfied to be a rod in my hand which shall achieve the
deliverance of my people. O frail, weak soul, thou art like
liest to be the channel and organ for the forthputting of
my energy. Only yield thyself to me, and let me have my
way through thee, with thee, in thee ; then thou shalt be
as the northern iron and brass, which man cannot break "
(xv. n-14).
V. The Response of the Soul. — "O Lord, thou know-
est." "Things that my dearest cannot guess, which I can
not utter, which I am slow to admit even to myself ; the

THE DROUGHT 79
hope that trembles like the first flush of dawn, and the fear
that paralyzes ; the conflict, the broken ideals, the unfin
ished sentences, the songs without words : thou knowest.
Thou art my all. Thy smile strengthens me against re
proach. Thy words bring rifts of joy and rejoicing in my
saddest hours. Thy presence banishes loneliness when I
sit alone. And yet sometimes a dark foreboding comes that
thou wilt be to me as a deceitful brook, whose intermit
tent waters fail, which is dry when most its flow is needed.
I know it cannot be, since thou art faithful ; and yet what
could I do if, after having made me what I am, thou should
est leave me to myself ?" (xv. 15-18).
The Answer of the Divine Spirit. — " Renounce thy fore
bodings." God seems to say : " Come back from the far
country of thy despondency. I would have thee stand face
to face with me without a shadow of a cloud. Wait before
me. Consider not thy frailty, but my might ; not thy foes,
but my deliverances. Put from thee that which is vile ; ex
pose thyself to my refining fires, that all thy dross may be
expurgated. Divest thyself of all that is inconsistent with
thy high calling. Then thou shalt be as my mouth ; thou
shalt stand amid the surging crowd as a fenced brazen
wall ; thou shalt be impregnable against the assault of fear ;
in the darkest hours, when floods of ungodliness might
make thee afraid, and the fury of hell be hurled against
thee, I will be with thee to save and deliver. Thou may-
est have neither wife nor child ; but I will be to thee more
than they. And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the
wicked, and redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible."
" This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their
righteousness is of me, saith the Lord" (xv. 19-21).

IX.
" ®n the flutter's toljeel."
(Jeremiah xviii. 4.)
" He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This present thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. "
R. Browning.
ONE day, beneath the impulse of the Divine Spirit,
Jeremiah went beyond the city precincts to the Val
ley of Hinnom, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where, in a
little hut, he found a potter busily engaged at his handi
craft. " Behold, he wrought a work on the wheels."
Amid the many improvements of the present day, the art
of pottery remains almost as it was as many centuries be
fore Christ as we live after.
As the prophet stood quietly beside the potter, he saw
him take a piece of clay from the mass that lay beside his
hand, and, having kneaded it to rid it of the bubbles, place
it on the wheel, rapidly revolving horizontally at the motion
of his foot driving the treadle. From that moment his
hands were at work, within and without, shaping the vessel
with his deft touch, here widening, there leading it up into
a more slender form, and, again, opening out the lip. So
that from the shapeless clay there emerged a fair and beau-
80

"ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL" 81
tiful vessel, fit for the Temple court or the royal palace.
When it was nearly complete, and the next step would
have been to remove it, to await the kiln, through a flaw
in the material it fell a shapeless ruin — some broken pieces
upon the wheel, and others upon the floor of the house.
The prophet naturally expected that the potter would
immediately take another piece of clay, and produce in its
yielding substance the ideal which had been so hopelessly
marred under his hand. Instead of this, however, to his
astonishment and keenly excited interest, the potter with
scrupulous care gathered up the broken pieces of the clay
and pressed them together as at the first, and placed the
clay again where it had lain before, and made it again into
another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Perhaps this second vessel was not quite so fair as the first
might have been ; still it was beautiful and useful. It was
a memorial of the potter's patience and long-suffering, of
his careful use of material, and of his power of repairing loss
and making something out of failure and disappointment.
O vision of the long-suffering patience of God ! 0
bright anticipation of God's redemptive work ! O parable
of remade characters and lives and hopes ! To us, as to
Jeremiah, the divine thought is flashed: "Cannot I do
with you as this potter ? saith the Lord. Behold, as the
clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O
house of Israel."
The purport of this vision seems to have been to give
his people hope that even though they had marred God's
fair ideal, yet a glorious and blessed future was within
reach ; and that if only they would yield themselves to the
touch of the Great Potter, he would undo the results of
years of disobedience which had marred and spoiled his
fair purpose, and would make the chosen people a vessel
unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master's use.

82 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
The same thought may apply to us all. Who is there
that is not conscious of having marred and resisted the
touch of God's molding hands ? Who is there that does
not lament opportunities of saintliness which were lost
through the obdurateness of the will and the hardness
of the heart ? Who is there that would not like to be
made again as seems good to the Potter ? " But now,
O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou
our Potter ; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not
wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for
ever." I. The Divine Making of Men. — (i) The Potter has an
Ideal. — Floating through his fancy there is the vessel that
is to be. He already sees it hidden in the shapeless clay,
waiting for his call to evoke. His hands achieve so far as
they may the embodiment of the fair conception of his
thought. Before the woman applies scissors to the silk she
has conceived the pattern of her dress ; before the spade
cleaves the sod the architect has conceived the plan of the
building to be erected there.
So of God in nature. The pattern of this round world
and of her sister-spheres lay in his creative thought before
the first beam of light streamed across the abyss. All that
exists embodies with more or less exactness the divine ideal
— sin alone excepted. So of the mystical body of Christ,
the Church, his bride. In his Book all his " members were
written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet
there was none of them." So also of the possibilities of each
human life. I know not if we shall ever be permitted,
amid the archives of heaven, to see the transcript of God's
original thought of what our life might have been had we
only yielded ourselves to the hands that reach down from

"ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL" 83
heaven molding men ; but sure it is that God foreordained
and predestinated us, each in his own measure and degree,
to be conformed to the image of his Son.
See that mother bending over the cradle where her first
born baby son lies sleeping. Mark that smile which goes
and comes over her face, like a breath of wind on a calm
summer's day ! Why does she smile? Ah! she is dream
ing, and in her dreams is building castles of the future
eminence of this child — in the pulpit or the Senate, in war
or art. If only she might have her way he should be fore
most in happiness, renowned in the service of men. But
no mother ever wished so much for her child as God for
us, when first cradled at the foot of the cross.
To be like Christ, the type of perfect manhood ; to be
as much to Christ as he was to his Father ; to reflect the
face of Christ on men as he the face of God ; to fulfill the
commission of redemption ; to take up the cross ; to be
crucified with Christ ; to rise and reign with him — all this
is God's ideal.
(2) 77/<? Potter Achieves his Purpose by Means of the Wheel.
— In the discipline of human life this surely represents the
revolution of daily circumstance ; often monotonous, com
monplace, trivial enough, and yet intended to effect, if it
may, ends on which God has set his heart.
Many, on entering the life of full consecration and devo
tion, are eager to change the circumstances of their lives
for those in which they suppose that they will more readily
attain a fully developed character. Hence much of the
restlessness and fever, the disappointment, and willfulness,
of the early days of Christian experience. Such have yet to
learn that out of myriads of circumstances God has chosen
the lot of each as being specially adapted to develop the
hidden qualities and idiosyncrasies of the soul he loves.

84 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
Anything else than the life which you are called to live
would fail in giving scope for the evolution of properties
of your nature which are known only to God, as the colors
and fragrance which lie enfolded in some tropic seed. Be
lieve that all has been ordered or permitted, because of
that which lay entombed within you waiting for his call,
" Come forth ! "
Do not, therefore, seek to change, by some rash and
willful act, the setting and environment of your life. Stay
where you are till God as evidently calls you elsewhere as
he has put you where you are. Abide for the present in
the calling wherein you were called. Throw upon him the
responsibility of indicating to you a change when it is nec
essary for your further development. In the meanwhile
look deep into the heart of every circumstance for its spe
cial message, lesson, or discipline. Upon the way in which
you accept or reject these will depend the achievement or
marring of the divine purpose.
You complain of the monotony of your life. Day in,
day out, the same round. Year after year the same path
trodden to and fro ; no horizon ; no space or width ; only
the same lane of sky between the high houses on either
side. What scope is there here for the evolution of noble
character ? What opportunity to meditate and achieve
great deeds ? Yet remember that the passive virtues are
even dearer to God than the active ones. They take the
longest learning and are the last learned. They consist in
patience, submission, endurance, long-suffering, persistence
in well-doing. They need more courage and evince greater
heroism than those qualities which the world admires most.
But they can only be acquired in just that monotonous
and narrow round of which many complain as offering so
scant a chance of acquiring saintliness.
(3) The Bulk of the Work is Done by the Potter's Fingers.

"ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL" 85
— How delicate their touch ! How fine their sensibility !
It would almost seem as though they were endued with intel
lect, instead of being the instruments by which the brain is
executing its purpose. And in the nurture of the soul these
represent the touch of the Spirit of God working in us to
will and to do of his good pleasure. He is in us all, his
one purpose being to infill us with himself, and to fulfill
through us " all the good pleasure of his goodness, and
every work of faith, with power ; that the name of our Lord
Jesus may be glorified in us, and we in him."
But we are too busy, too absorbed in many things, to
heed the gentle touch. Sometimes, when we are aware of
it, we resent it, or stubbornly refuse to yield to it. Hence
the necessity of setting apart a portion of every day, or a
season in the course of the week, in which to seclude our
selves from every other influence, and expose the entire
range of our being to divine influences only.
The wheel and the hand worked together ; often their
motion was in opposite directions, but their object was
one. So all things work together for good to them that
love God. God's touch and voice give the meaning of
his providences, and his providences enforce the lesson that
his tender monitions might not be strong enough to teach.
Whenever, therefore, you are in doubt as to the meaning
of certain circumstances through which you are called to
pass, and which are strange and inexplicable, be still ; re
frain from murmuring or repining ; hush the many voices
that would speak within, and listen until there is borne in
on your soul a persuasion of God's purpose, and let his
Spirit within cooperate with the circumstance without. It
is in the equal working of these two — the circumstance sup
plying the occasion for manifesting a certain grace, and the
Holy Ghost supplying the grace to be manifested — that the
spirit soars, as the bird by the even motion of its two wings.

86 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
II. God's Remaking of Men. — "He made it again."
The potter could not make what he might have wished,
but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever try
ing to do his best for us. If we refuse the best he gives
the next best. If we will not be gold we may be silver,
and if not silver there are still the earthen and the wood.
How often he has to make us again !
He made Jacob again when he met him at the Jabbok
ford, finding him a supplanter and a cheat, but after a long
wrestle leaving him a prince with God. He made Simon
again, on the resurrection morning, when he found him
somewhere near the open grave, the son of a dove — for
so his old name Bar-jona signifies — and left him Peter,
the man of the rock, the apostle of Pentecost. He made
Mark again, between his impulsive leaving of Paul and
Barnabas, as though frightened by the first touch of sea
sickness, and the times when Peter spake of him as his
son, and Paul from the Mamertine prison described him
as being profitable.
I have been told of a gifted son who, when night has
fallen, and his aged father has gone to the early couch of
age, comes into the studio where the old man's hands had
been busily engaged all day modeling clay, not without
some fear that they are losing their skill, and removes all
trace of senility or decay. So does God come to our work
when we have done our best and failed, and when men
have turned from us with disappointment. He perfects
that which concerns us, because his mercy endures for
ever, and he cannot forsake the work of his own hands.
Are you conscious of having marred God's early plan
for yourself ? His ideal of a life of earnest devotion to
his cause has been so miserably lost sight of. Your career
as parent or child, as friend or Christian worker, has been
such a failure. The grand chord struck in your early vows

"ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL" 87
at the marriage altar, or on the day of ordination, has been
lost beyond recall ; and the whole music has been so halt
ing and feeble. For such science and the competition of
modern life have little encouragement. There seems no
alternative but to go off into the rear, and let others carry
away the prizes that come so easily to them ; while into
the soul the conviction is burned: "I had my chance and
missed it ; it will never come to me again. The survival
of the fittest leaves no place for the unfit. They must be
flung amid the waste which is ever accumulating around
the furnaces of human life." It is here that the gospel
comes in with its gentle words for the outcast and lost.
The bruised reed is made again into a pillar for the temple
of God. The feebly smoking flax is kindled to a flame.
The waste products are shown to be of extraordinary value,
yielding the fairest colors, or providing the elementary
principles of life.
III. Our Attitude toward the Great Potter. —
Yield to him ! Each particle in the clay seems to say
" Yes " to wheel and hand. And in proportion as this is
the case the work goes merrily on. If there be rebellion
and resistance, the work of the potter is marred. Let God
have his way with you. Let his will be done in you as in
heaven. Bear it even when you cannot do it. Be sure and
say "Yes." There are times when we are not conscious
that he is doing right. Life is often like the gray aspect
of nature in February, when spring waits just outside the
portal longing to touch all .things with her magic wand.
It seems as if no one is concerned about " all the miles of
unsprung wheat," or responsible for leaf or bud. Yet in
myriads upon myriads of graves where seeds lie buried,
God's angels are busily at work, rolling away stones and
ushering in the new heaven and the new earth of spring.

88

JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET

So when we have once committed ourselves to God, we
must believe that he does not lose a single moment, but is
ever hurrying forward the consummation of his ideal.
We cannot always understand his dealings, because we
do not know what his purpose is. We fail to recognize
the design, the position which we are being trained to fill,
the ministry we are to exercise. What wonder then that
.we get puzzled and perplexed ! We strive with our Maker,
saying, "What makest thou?" or, "He hath no hands." Yet
surely it is enough to know our Guide, if we do not know
which point he is aiming for in the long chain of hills. He
knows all the mountain passes, and will take the easiest.
There is special comfort in these thoughts for the middle-
aged and old. Do not look regretfully back on the wasted
springtime and summer, gone beyond recall ; though it be
autumn there is yet chance for thee to bear some fruit,
under the care of the great Husbandman. In all he in
spires hope. He can turn the battle from the gate, and
make the lost iron swim, and replenish the empty pitchers
with new good wine, and restore the years the canker-worm
has eaten, and make failures into victories. He who was able
to transform the cross from a badge of shame into the sign
of victory and glory must surely be able to take the most
hopeless, disreputable, and abandoned lives, and make them
bloom with flowers heavy with fragrance and full of blessed
promise. Only let him have a free hand. Whatsoever he
says, do it, or suffer it to be done. Seek forgiveness for the
past, then restoration and remaking at his hand. Reckon
on God, and according to your faith it shall be done unto
you.

X.
QH}e iFire of $olg Impulse.
(Jeremiah xx. 9.)
" There is a stay, and we are strong!
Our Master is at hand
To cheer our solitary song
And guide us to the strand!
Or if, for our unworthiness,
Toil, prayer, and watching fail,
In disappointment thou canst bless,
So love at heart prevail!" Keble.
JEREMIAH'S nature reminds us of the ^Eolian harp,
which is so sensitive to the passing breeze, now wailing
with sorrow, now jubilant with song : so delicately strung,
so sympathetic, so easily affected by every passing circum
stance, was the soul of the prophet. The whole book mir
rors the changefulness of his mood, as the ocean the per
petual heavens outspread above it — now blue as the azure
sky, and again dark with the brooding storm.
There are many indications of this in the chapters before
us. For instance there is the exclamation, " Cursed be the
day wherein I was born. . . . Cursed be the man who brought
tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto
thee. . . . Wherefore was I born to see labor and sorrow? "
(xx. 14-18). But in the same breath there is the heroic
outburst, " The Lord is with me as a mighty one and ter-

9° JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
rible ; therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall
not prevail" (xx. n). How great the contrast between
these moods ! In the first he is traversing the valley of
the shadow, where the dark trees shut out the sky, and the
swollen torrent rushes turbidly through the gorge ; in the
second he stands upon the heights where the sun shines,
and to the far horizon the landscape lies outspread, its corn
fields goldening in the summer sun.
The same contrast appears in this verse. There we find
the half-formed resolution to make no further mention of
God, and to speak no more in his name. Then he is in
stantly aware of his inability to control the passionate out
burst of the Spirit within. " There is in mine heart as it
were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary
with forbearing, and I cannot contain " (r.v.). Oh, won
derful heart of man ! who can understand thee, who can
estimate the heights to which thou canst rise, or the depths
to which thou canst sink ? What an infinitude of bliss
and of sorrow is within thy compass ! How radiant thy
heavens, how dark thine abyss ! It is well for us when we
learn to distinguish between the life of our emotions and
that of our will, and resolve to live no more in mood or
emotion, but to build the edifice of our life upon the gran
ite of the obedient will.
I. The Circumstances out of which these Words
Sprang. — Jeremiah's Half-formed Resolution. — " I will not
make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name."
Not improbably by this time Nineveh had fallen. For six
hundred years she had ruled surrounding nations with a rod
of iron tyranny, exerting an imperial sway with merciless
cruelty. At last her time had come. A vast host gath
ered from Asia Minor as far as the shores of the Black
Sea, from the entire valley of the Tigris, from Armenia,

THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE 91
Assyria, and the wandering tribes of the desert, and set
tled down on her as swarms of hornets on a putrid carcass.
For two years the siege had lasted under the direction of
the trusted general of the last, king of Nineveh, Nabopo-
lassar, whose son, Nebuchadnezzar, was destined to be the
"hammer of God." Rumors of this catastrophe were
spreading through the world, carrying everywhere a sense
of relief and foreboding — relief that the tyrant was down,
foreboding as to who should take his place.
At this time Egypt was in the zenith of her power.
Amid the decrepitude of Nineveh, Pharaoh had seized the
opportunity of extending his empire to the banks of the
Tigris. The kingdom of Judah, like all neighboring nations,
owned, at least nominally, the king of Egypt as suzerain.
Confidence in the proximity and prowess of his great ally
encouraged Jehoiakim in his career of shameless idolatry
and sin. The whole land, as we have seen, was corrupt.
Jeremiah, the foremost of the little band that remained
true to the best traditions of the past, never lost an oppor
tunity of lodging his complaint or striving to resist the down
ward progress of his people. In doing this he aroused an
ever-growing weight of opposition. The plot of his native
town of Anathoth was the first volcanic outburst, to be fol
lowed by a long series of plots and snares and manifesta
tions of hatred on the part of those for whom he would
have gladly given his life as he daily gave his prayers.
He sat alone, cast out by prophet and priest, by court and
people. " Come," they said on one occasion, " and let us devise
devices against Jeremiah ; for the law shall not perish from
the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from
the prophet." He was a laughing-stock all the day. Every
one mocked him. The word of the Lord was made a re
proach to him and a derision continually. His associates

92 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
and those with whom he came in contact watched for his
halting, and whispered that peradventure he would be en
ticed so that they should prevail against him and take their
revenge on him.
Matters culminated finally in the episode of chapters xix.
and xx. Beneath a divine impulse he procured a com
mon earthen bottle, and gathering a number of the elders,
led them forth into the Valley of Hinnom, beside the gate
of the potsherds. On this spot the refuse of the city was
perpetually exposed to the foul birds and the wild dogs.
It was a place of abhorring and loathsomeness. There
he uttered a long and terrible indictment of the sins of his
people, accompanying it with predictions of the certain
and irrevocable doom to which they were hurrying. The
men of Jerusalem would fall there by the sword before
their enemies ; in the straitness of the siege they would eat
the flesh of their sons and their daughters. The city itself
would fall into ruins of blackened stones, and the surround
ing valley be filled with the carcasses of the slain making
banquet for the fowls of the heaven and the beasts of the
earth. To emphasize his words he broke the potter's ves
sel, pouring forth its contents in token that the blood of his
countrymen would be shed to bedew and saturate the soil.
Not satisfied with this, he returned from Tophet and
stood in the court of the Temple, perhaps on the steps that
led up to the court of the priests. Crowds of people were
probably at the time engaged in some sacred rite ; it may
have been the time of one of the great feasts. When his
voice was heard, a vast concourse must have gathered,
whose angry faces and vehement gestures indicated the in
tensity of their dislike to the man who cast the shadow of
impending destruction over their gayest hours. The en
durance of one of them at least had at last reached its
limit. Pashur, the chief governor of the Temple, to whose

THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE 93
jurisdiction its order was intrusted, gathering a band of
Levites or Temple servants, seized the prophet, threw him
on the pavement, scourged him after the Eastern fashion,
and finally thrust him into the stocks, leaving him there
the whole night, to the ridicule and hatred of the populace,
to the cold night and the prowling dogs.
In the morning Pashur appears to have repented of his
harsh treatment, and to have released the prophet, whose
strong spirit was not for a moment cowed by the indignity
and torture to which he had been exposed. Turning on
his persecutor, he told him that he would live to be a ter
ror to himself and all his friends ; that all Judah would be
given into the hand of the king of Babylon, now men
tioned for the first time ; that the people would be carried
captives to Babylon, and slain there with the sword ; and
that all the riches and gains of the city, and all the pre
cious things thereof, and all the treasures of the king of
Judah, should be given into the hand of their enemies to
carry to Babylon. It is this fourfold mention of Babylon
that gives color to the suggestion that Nineveh had fallen,
and that the strong hand of Nabopolassar and his son was
beginning to show itself, and to wield the scepter which
was falling from the faltering grasp of one of the oldest
and greatest empires of antiquity.
Set free, Jeremiah went to his home, and there poured
forth that marvelous combination of heroic faith and wail
ing grief which is recorded for us that we may know the
weakness of his nature and learn how earthen was the ves
sel in which God had placed his heavenly treasure. No
brazen wall was he, but a reed shaken by the wind ; no
wise, strong hero, but a child. What he did and said when
face to face with his age was due to no native strength or
heroism ; as he says himself, his was " the soul of the
needy" (verse 13, r.v.).

94 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
What a tale could be told by the walls of the secret
chambers of God's greatest saints! What litanies of tears
and sighs and broken sentences have beaten against them
in successive billows of heart-rending sorrow ! Take, for
instance, that outburst of Luther on the eve of his appear
ance before the Diet of Worms. Those who have seemed
strongest and most rock-like in the presence of their fellows
have sunk most helplessly on the ground in solitude, con
fessing that none were so weak and helpless as they.
Our prophet seems to have gone even farther. Then
came a suggestion to his heart that he should relinquish his
labors and renounce public for private life. Why struggle
any more against the inevitable ? Why set himself to con
vince those who would not be convinced, and who repaid
his love with hate ? Why surrender name and comfort
and human love for the thankless task of endeavoring to
stem his people's career? He came to the point of say
ing, " Send whom thou wilt send ; intrust thy commission
to some stronger soul, cast in a more heroic mold ; let me
go back to the seclusion and humble toils of my village
home." Not dissimilar have been the appeals of God's servants
in every age, when they have measured their weakness
against the strength of the evils they have combated, and
have marked their limited success: the handfuls of seed
wasted upon barren soil ; the word spoken in the ear of
the wind ; the futility of opposing an Ahab or a Jezebel ;
the ingratitude of those whom they would have gladly
saved. They have been disposed to cry with the greatest
of the prophets, " It is enough ; let me die ! "
II. The Irresistible Impulse. — "There is in mine
heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and
I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain." " O

THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE 95
Lord, . . . thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed."
Three things arrest us here.
(i) The Prophet's Habit of Turning from Man to God. —
Throughout the book there are so many indications of the
close fellowship in which he lived with Jehovah. God
seemed always nigh at hand. His ear always bent down
to the least whisper of his servant's need. Compelled to
live much alone, this much-suffering man acquired the
habit of counting on the companionship of God as one of
the undoubted facts of his life. He poured into the ear
of God every thought as it passed through his soul. He
spread forth his roots by the river of God, which is full of
water. There was no fear, therefore, that his leaf would
become sere in the summer heat, or that he would cease
from yielding fruit in the year of drought. The Lord was
his strength, his stronghold, and his refuge in the day of
affliction, and to him he opened his cause. "Heal me, O
Lord, and I shall be healed ; save me, and I shall be
saved : for thou art my praise. . . . Let me not be dis
mayed or ashamed" (xvii. 14-18).
Let us seek this attitude of soul, which easily turns
from man to God ; not foregoing the hours of prolonged
fellowship, but, in addition, acquiring the habit of talking
over our life with One who does not need to be informed
of what transpires, but awaits with infinite desire to receive
the confidence of his children. Talk over each detail of
your life with God, telling him all things, and finding the
myriad needs of the soul satisfied in him.
(2) The Burning Fire. — We have sometimes seen a little
steamer, like " The Maid of the Mist " at the foot of the
Falls of Niagara, resisting and gaining upon a stormy tor
rent madly rushing past her. Slowly she has worked her
way through the mad rush of waters, defying their attempt
to bear her back, calmly and serenely pursuing her onward

96 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
course, without being turned aside, driven back, or dis
mayed. And why ? Because a burning fire is shut up in
her heart, and her engines cannot stay, because impelled
in their strong and regular motion. Similarly, within Jere
miah's heart a fire had been lit from the heart of God, and
was kept aflame by the continual fuel heaped on it. The
difficulty, therefore, with him was, not in speaking, but in
keeping silent — not in acting, but in refraining.
This sheds some light upon the prophetic impulse, and
helps us to understand what the Apostle Peter meant when
he said, " Holy men of God spake as they were borne
along by the Holy Ghost." It was as though the cur
rent of thought and feeling came mightily from without,
and, passing through them, swept them forward irresistibly.
In this way it often happened that the prophets did not
understand words which were put into their hearts by the
Spirit of God, and of whose full meaning they were ignorant.
But, after all, our main desire is to know how we mav
have this heart on fire. We are tired of a cold heart to
ward God. We complain because of our sense of effort
in Christian life and duty ; we would fain learn the secret
of being so possessed by the Spirit and thought of God
that we might be daunted by no opposition, abashed by
no fear. The source of the inward fire is the love of God,
shed abroad by the Holy Ghost ; not primarily our love to
God, but our sense of his love to us. The coals of juniper
that gave so fierce a heat to the heart of a Rutherford were
brought from the altar of the heart of God. If we set
ourselves with open face toward the cross, which, like a
burning lens, focuses the love of God, and if, at the same
time, we reckon upon the Holy Spirit — well called the
Spirit of Burning — to do his wonted office, we shall find
the ice that cakes the surface of our heart dissolving in
tears of penitence, and presently the sacred fire will begin

THE FIRE OF HOLY IMPULSE 97
to glow. Then the love of Christ will constrain us. Whether
we be beside ourselves or be sober will not be the subject
of our consideration ; but his Spirit, the thought of what
he desires, the passion of fulfilling his will, will destroy the
fire of self-esteem, and replace it with the sacred fire of
passionate devotion.
When that love has once begun to burn within the soul,
when once the baptism of fire has set us aglow, the sins
and sorrows of men — their impieties and blasphemies, their
disregard of God, of his service and of his day, their blind
courting of danger, their dalliance with evil — will only incite
in us a more ardent spirit. To see the multitudes rushing
to destruction, to hear the boast of the blasphemer, the
taunt of the infidel, the cry of the oppressed, the ribald
mirth of the profane, the desecration of all that is holiest
and best in man ; to think of the grief caused to the Spirit
of God, the dishonor done to him ; to anticipate the outer
darkness, the undying worm, the bottomless pit — surely
these will be enough to fan the smoldering embers till they
break out in the least emotional ; as when Jeremiah said
that he felt an inner impulse, to restrain which was a weari
ness, to stay from obeying which was a sin.
(3) The Prophet's Safety. — "The Lord is with me as a
mighty one and terrible ; therefore my persecutors shall
stumble, and they shall not prevail." The presence of God
is salvation. When Ezekiel describes the plot of Edom to
possess herself of the land of the chosen people, he indi
cates by a single phrase the futility of the attempt, saying sig
nificantly, "Whereas the Lord was there" (Ezek. xxxv. 10).
It was enough, though Israel was in exile, that God's Spirit
was brooding over their desolate land. He guarded its
frontiers and filled its vacant spaces, and could not be dis
possessed. His presence made every attempt to capture
it abortive.

98 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
Thus Jeremiah felt. He might be the weakest of the
weak, having neither might, nor wisdom, nor power of
speech, apparently the easy prey of Pashur and Jehoiakim ;
but since God was with him, casting the mantle of his pro
tection around his servant, and pledging himself to be his
stronghold and house of defence, he was invulnerable.
0 weak and trembling soul, if thou art true to God, God
is with thee, besetting thee behind and before, and cover
ing thee with the hollow of his hand. Thou shalt be like
the city of the great King — the kings may assemble, but
so soon as they see thee they shall be stricken with terror
and pass away, while thou shalt be a quiet habitation, a
tent that shall not be removed, the stakes whereof shall
never be plucked, neither shall any of the cords thereof be
broken. "This God is our God forever and ever: he will
be our guide even forevermore " (Ps. xlviii. 14, r.v., marg.).

XI.
Afflictions, Distresses, fJnmnlts.
(Jeremiah xxvi.)
" I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within ;
I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.
" Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings —
I know that God is good." Whittier.
JEHOIAKIM was, perhaps, the most despicable of the
kings of Judah. Josephus says that he was unjust in
disposition, an evil-doer, neither pious toward God nor
just toward men. Something of this may have been due
to the influence of his wife Nehushta, whose father, Elna-
than, was an accomplice in the royal murder of Urijah.
" Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to
reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem : and he
did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God."
Such is the inspired epitaph by the chronicler.
Jeremiah appears to have been constantly in conflict with
this king, and probably the earliest manifestation of conflict
that could not but subsist between two such men occurred
99

ioo JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
in connection with the building of Jehoiakim's palace.
Though his kingdom was greatly impoverished with the
heavy fine of between forty and fifty thousand pounds im
posed by Pharaoh Necho after the defeat and death of
Josiah, and though the times were dark with portents of
approaching disaster, yet he began to rear a splendid pal
ace for himself, with spacious chambers and large windows,
floors of cedar and decorations of vermilion. As Elijah
confronted Ahab, so did Jeremiah confront the young king
with his terrible woes : " Woe unto him that buildeth his
house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by injustice ;
that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth
him not his hire. . . . Thine eyes and thine heart are not
but for thy dishonest gain, and for oppression, and for vio
lence." He further reminded him that the stability of
Josiah's throne depended not on the splendor of his pal
ace, but upon the justice with which he judged the cause
of the poor and needy (Jer. xxii. 13, etc.).
Clearly such a monarch must have entertained a mortal
hatred toward the man who dared to raise his voice in
denunciation of his crimes ; and, like Herod with John the
Baptist, he would not have scrupled to quench in blood
the light that cast such strong condemnation upon his
oppressive and cruel actions. An example of this had been
recently afforded in the death of Urijah, who had uttered
solemn words against Jerusalem and its inhabitants in the
same way that Jeremiah had done. Such fury had been
excited by his words that he had been obliged to flee to
Egypt, from whence the king had secured his extradition,
that he might avenge his bold denunciation by the sword
and fling his body into the graves of the common people.
Small shrift, then, could be expected by Jeremiah, if the
king dared to take measures against him. But it would
appear that this time at least his safety was secured by the

AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESSES, TUMULTS 101
interposition of influential friends among the aristocracy,
one of whom was Ahikam, the son of Shaphan (Jer. xxvi.
20-24). I. The Divine Commission. — Beneath the divine im
pulse Jeremiah went up to the court of the Lord's house,
and took his place on some great occasion when all the
cities of Judah had poured their populations to worship
there. Not one word was to be kept back. We are all
more or less conscious of these inward impulses ; and it
often becomes a matter of considerable difficulty to distin
guish whether they originate in the energy of our own
nature or are the genuine outcome of the Spirit of Christ.
It is only in the latter case that such service can be fruit
ful. And here for a moment we will turn aside to see how
the heart of man may become the medium through which
God can pour his thoughts on men, and the way by which
we may recognize his inward prompting.
There is no greater enemy of the highest usefulness than
the presence of the flesh in our activities. There is no
department of life or service into which its subtle, deadly
influence does not penetrate. We have to encounter it in
our unregenerate life, when its passions reveal themselves,
brooking no restraint. We meet it after we have entered
upon the new life, striving against the Spirit, and restrain
ing his gracious energy. We are most baffled when we
find it prompting to holy resolutions, and efforts after a
consecrated life. The Apostle Paul calls this the unequal
marriage of the flesh, or self-life, with the holy law of God
— a union which brings forth fruit unto death. And, lastly,
it confronts us in Christian work, because there is so much
of it that in our quiet moments we are bound to trace to a
desire for notoriety, to a passion to excel, and to the rest
lessness of a nature which evades questions in the deeper

102 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
life by flinging itself into every avenue through which it
may exert its activities.
There is only one solution to these difficulties. By the
way of the cross and the grave we can alone become dis
entangled and discharged from the insidious domination of
this evil principle, which is accursed by God, and hurtful
to holy living, as blight to the tender fruit. In the cross
of Jesus, when he died in the likeness of sinful flesh, God
wrote his curse upon every manifestation of selfish and
fleshly energy ; and now it remains for each of us to appro
priate that cross, to accept the divine sentence, to lie in
the grave where the voices of human ambition and adula
tion cannot follow us, to oppose the silence of death to the
workings of our evil self. Not, however, to stay there ;
but to pass up by the grace of the Holy Ghost into the
pure resurrection air and light, where no face is visible
but that of the risen Saviour, where no voice is audible
save his, and where in the hush of perfect fellowship the
spirit becomes able to discern the wish of its Lord.
II. The Message and its Reception. — There was a
twofold appeal in the words Jeremiah was commissioned
to deliver on this great occasion, when the whole land
stood intent to hear. On the one side, by his lips, God
entreated his people to repent and turn from their evil
ways ; on the other, he bade them know that their obdu
racy would compel him to make their great national shrine
as complete a desolation as the site of Shiloh, which for
five hundred years had been in ruins. It is impossible to
realize the intensity of passion which such words evoked.
They seemed to insinuate that Jehovah could not defend
his own, or that their religion had become so heartless that
he would not. Prophets and priests had assured the peo
ple that the very presence among them of Jehovah's Tem-

AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESSES, TUMULTS 103
pie was a guaranty of their safety, and to suggest that a
fate might overtake them like that which in the days of
Samuel made the ears of every listener to tingle seemed the
height of impertinence. " Now it came to pass, when Jere
miah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had
commanded him to speak unto all the people," that he found
himself suddenly in the vortex of a whirlpool of popular
excitement. Thus it befell Paul in after-days, when the
presumption that he had defiled the holy place produced
so intense a paroxysm of popular feeling that all the city
was moved, and the people ran together and laid hold on
him, and dragged him out of the Temple, so that he was
with difficulty rescued by a regiment of Roman soldiers,
who bore him by main force from the violence of the
crowd, the multitude following and crying out, " Away
with him !" (Acts xxi. 27-36). There is little doubt that
Jeremiah would have met his death in a similar entente, had
it not been for the prompt interposition of the princes.
Such is always the reception given on the part of man to
the words of God. We may gravely question how far our
words are God's, when people accept them quietly and as
a matter of course. The Word of God to those that hug
their sin can only be as fire, a hammer, and a sharp, two-
edged sword. And here again is a certain test whether
our message is the product of our own fancy, or the burden
of the Lord. That which men approve and applaud may
lack the King's seal and be the substitution on the part of
the messenger of tidings which he deems more palatable,
and therefore more likely to secure for himself a larger
welcome. III. Welcome Interposition. — The princes were
seated in the palace, and instantly on receiving tidings of
the outbreak came up to the Temple. Their presence

104 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND PROPHET
stilled the excitement, and prevented the infuriated people
from carrying out their design upon the life of the defence
less prophet. They hastily constituted themselves into a
court of appeal, before which prophet and people were
summoned. The priests and prophets acted as the ex
ponents of the people's wish, and demanded sentence of
death, turning from the court to the people to ask their
concurrence. Then Jeremiah stood on his defence. His
plea was that he could not but utter the words with which
the Lord had sent him. Again he called upon the people
to amend their ways. He acknowledged that he was in
their hands, but he warned them that innocent blood would
bring its own Nemesis upon them all, and at the close
of his address he reaffirmed his certain embassage from
Jehovah. This bold and ingenuous defence seems to have turned
the scale in his favor. The princes gave their verdict :
"This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to
us in the name of the Lord our God." And the fickle
populace, swept hither and thither by the wind, appear to
have passed over en masse to the same conclusion ; so that
princes and people stood confederate against the false
prophets and priests. The conclusion thus gained was
further confirmed by the voice of certain of the elders of
the land, who had come from all the cities of Judah, and
who reminded the people that the good King Hezekiah
had acted very differently to the prophet Micah in listen
ing to his remonstrances, entreating the favor of the Lord,
and securing the reversal of the divine sentence.
Thus does God hide his faithful servants in the hollow
of his hand. No weapon that is formed against them pros
pers. They are hidden in the secret of his pavilion from
the strife of tongues.

AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESSES, TUMULTS 105

historical connection.
In a previous chapter we saw that Egypt was mistress
of all lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. But as soon
as the Chaldeans had established their kingdom upon the
ruins of Nineveh, they turned their attention to wrest from
Pharaoh Necho some portion of his vast empire. Jeremiah
had long before seen that this would be the case, and had
depicted in graphic imagery the scene and issue of the
awful battle at Carchemish, by the Euphrates, where the
two mighty peoples wrestled for the supreme power of the
world. He heard the call to arms. He beheld the horses heav
ily armed, and the horsemen with flashing spears and coats
of mail. The Egyptian hosts, like the Nile at flood, pour
themselves against the solid ranks of their foes ; her tribu
taries from Cush and Put, together with the Ludim, famous
at handling the bow, strive in vain to check the flight of
Egypt's mighty men. They flee apace, and look not back ;
the sword devours and drinks its fill of blood ; the cry of
the fugitive hosts fills the earth with clamor ; and the mighty
stumble, never to rise (Jer. xlvi. 1-1 2). Egypt never rallied
again, nor dared to do more than strive against the yoke
that Nebuchadnezzar, with imperial might, fastened upon
her. After this there was nothing to stay the onset of Nebu
chadnezzar, who probably had been associated in the king
dom with his aged father, and the first year of whose reign
would therefore coincide with the fourth year of Jehoiakim
(Jer. xxv. 1). Like a leopard, to use the expression of
Habakkuk, who at this time was beginning to exercise his
ministry, the young king leaped upon the peoples that had
been subject to Egypt and had aided in her expedition.

106 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
And, as the tidings of his prowess spread through the
world, Jeremiah foretold that he would be the scourge of
God to punish the abounding wickedness of the peoples :
" I will send unto Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
my servant, and will bring him against this land, and against
the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round
about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an
astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations. . . .
And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonish
ment ; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon
seventy years."
In his first invasion of Judah the king of Babylon con
tented himself with binding Jehoiakim in fetters to carry
him to Babylon, though he seems afterward to have changed
his intention, and to have restored him to his throne as his
vassal, taking an oath of allegiance (Ezek. xvii. 12, 13).
He stripped the Temple of its precious vessels to enrich
the house of his god at Babylon, and carried into captivity
several of the mighty of the land, among them Daniel and
his three friends (Dan. i. 1, 2). He then hastened back to
Babylon, summoned thither by the tidings of the death of
his father, Nabopolassar.
For three years Jehoiakim remained faithful to his oath
(2 Kings xxiv. 1); then he was deluded by the hope of
independence, based on the hope of forming a confedera
tion of neighboring peoples. Messengers went to and fro
between himself and Pharaoh, negotiating for horses and
much people ; though all the while Ezekiel and Jeremiah
protested that Jehovah would certainly punish him for vio
lating his pledge to the king of Babylon. This was a time
of unusual activity for the prophets of Jehovah, who strove
their utmost to avert a political mistake, founded upon a
moral obliquity, and sure to incur terrible vengeance
(Ezek. xvii. 15-21).

AFFLICTIONS, DISTRESSES, TUMULTS 107
It befell as they feared. Nebuchadnezzar, who was not
prepared to brook such infidelity on the part of a sub
ject king, soon put his forces in motion, and prepared to
advance across the desert to punish the weak and faithless
Jehoiakim. It was during his march on Jerusalem that the
incidents narrated in the two following chapters took place
— the one the proclamation of a fast, the other the gathering
of the Rechabites, with other fugitives, into the shelter of
the city.
We have no certain clew to the prophet's history during
these three or four years. His heart must have been filled
with the patriot's anguish as he saw the coils of invasion
drawn closer around the devoted city. To him, indeed, it
was the year of drought, and there was no hope save in
God ; and often upon his lips must have been words like
those which the great Florentine addressed to the city
which he loved with the passionate affection which the
Jews always cherished toward Jerusalem: "Thy sins, O
Florence, are the cause of these stripes. But now repent,
offer prayers, become united. I have wearied myself all
the days of my life to make known to thee the truths of
the faith and of holy living, and I have had nothing but
tribulations, derision, and reproach."

XII.
ftlje fttbestrnriible fcOoro.
(Jeremiah xxxvi. 23.)
" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again:
The eternal years of God are hers ;
But error, vanquished, writhes in pain,
And dies amid her worshipers."
WE are admitted to the prophet's private chamber,
where he is keeping close that he may not excite
the acute animosity and hatred of the people. Baruch, his
trusted friend, a man of rank and learning, sits writing with
laborious care at the dictation of the prophet, whose soul
is borne along by the impulse of the Divine Spirit. " Tell us
now," the princes said afterward to Baruch, " How didst thou
write all these words at his mouth? " Then Baruch answered
them, " He pronounced all these words unto me with his
mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book."
When the roll was filled, Jeremiah, not venturing to go
into places of public concourse, intrusted it to Baruch, and
bade him read it to the assembled crowds. Jerusalem just
then was unusually full. From all parts of Judah people
had come to observe the great fast which had been pro
claimed in view of the approach of the Babylonian army.
Adopting the cry which Jeremiah had so fervently depre
cated, " The Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord,
are these," and imagining that there was a special virtue in
108

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD 109
the Temple precincts, the multitudes had crowded thither
in an agony of fear, hoping by their black veils and covered
lips and heart-rending cries to propitiate the Almighty and
avert the fate that seemed imminent.
Choosing a position in the upper court at the entry of
the new gate to the Lord's house, Baruch commenced to
read, while the people stood densely massed around him.
Amid the awestruck crowd was a young man, Michaiah, the
grandson of Shaphan, who was so impressed and startled
by what he heard that he hastened to acquaint the
princes, then sitting in council in the chamber of the chief
secretary of state, in the royal palace. They in turn were
so aroused by what he told them that they sent him back
to the Temple, and asked Baruch to come without delay
and read the prophet's words to them. He came at their
request, and sitting among them commenced to read.
In the group of princes were several notable men : Elish-
ama, the secretary of state ; Elnathan, the father-in-law of
the king, who had brought the prophet Urijah back from
Egypt to die ; and others. A great fear fell upon them
as they heard those ominous words, which were probably
closely similar to those recorded in the twenty-fifth chap
ter of this book. Though they had joined in the general
hatred of the prophet, they were deeply sensible that there
was everything to justify him in his prognostications of
coming trouble ; and it seemed their plain duty to acquaint
the king with the contents of the roll.
Before doing so, however, they counseled Baruch and
Jeremiah to conceal themselves, for they well knew the
despotic and passionate temper of Jehoiakim ; and the roll
was left in the chamber of Elishama. It would appear
that in the first instance they thought a verbal statement
of the words they had heard would suffice. This, however,
would not satisfy the king, who bade Jehudi fetch the roll

no JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
itself. It was winter, the month of December ; the king
was occupying the winter-quarters of his palace, and a fire
was burning brightly in the brazier. It is a vivid picture —
the king sitting before the fire ; the princes standing around
him ; Jehudi reading the contents of the roll ; consternation
and panic reigning throughout the city and darkening the
faces of the prostrate crowds in the Temple courts. As
Jehudi began to read, the royal brow knit, and symptoms
of a tempest of anger showed themselves. After the scribe
had read three or four columns, Jehoiakim snatched the
roll from his hand, and, demanding the penknife which he
carried as symbol and implement of his calling, began to
cut the manuscript in pieces, which he flung contemptu
ously into the fire. The worst have some compunctions,
and for the most passionate there are warning voices that
remonstrate and plead. So was it with King Jehoiakim.
Delaiah, Gemariah, and even Elnathan tried to dissuade
him from his purpose, but in vain. Nothing could stop
him until the whole roll was cut to pieces, and every frag
ment consumed. Not content with this flagrant act of de
fiance, he gave orders for the immediate arrest of Jeremiah
and Baruch — an order which his emissaries attempted to
execute, but in vain.
The destruction of the roll did not, however, cancel the
terrible doom to which the ship of state was hurrying,
under the orders of its passionate and wicked captain.
On another roll all the words of the book which he had
burned were written again, and others were added, foretell
ing the indignity and insult to which the dead body of the
king would be exposed. " His dead body shall be cast
out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost."
I. Eyes Opened to See. — There was a vast difference
between Baruch, whose heart was in perfect sympathy with

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD in
Jeremiah, and Jehudi or the princes. But there was al
most as much between the faithful scribe and the Heaven-
illumined prophet. The one could only write as the words
streamed from those burning lips ; he saw nothing, he real
ized nothing ; to him the walls of the chamber were the
utmost bound of vision : while the other beheld the whole
landscape of truth outspread before him, the rocks and
shoals on the margin of the ocean, the inrolling storm-bil
lows tipped with angry foam, the gathering clouds, the
ship straining in every timber and driving sheer on the
shore. For Jeremiah the walls of the chamber where they
sat together were as though they had become transparent ;
he looked through and beyond them, and read off his mes
sage from what he saw, as a man might read from a book.
This was the work of the Spirit who inspired him, and
whose special function it was to open the eye of the seers
of the old time to the great facts of the unseen and eternal
world, which were shortly to be reduplicated in the world
of the temporal and visible. They beheld visions of God :
the sapphire throne upborne by the strong cherubim ; the
terrible wheels of providence ; the rise and fall of mighty
empires ; the subdual of sin and pain by the mighty sway
of the coming One. To speak what he knew, and to tes
tify what he had seen — such was the mission of the prophet.
In our case there is no likelihood of this. Yet men
may be seers still. Two men may sit together side by
side. The veil of sense may hang darkly before the one,
while for the other it is rent in twain from the top to the
bottom. There no thought, no ambition, no desire for
aught beyond the temporal and seen ; but here the vision
of the presence and care of God, of the principalities and
powers in the heavenlies, of the ministry of angels and the
opposition of fiends, of the chariots and horses of salvation,
of the prize and crown, of the awards of Christ's judgment-

112 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
seat, and the home beyond the river. Flesh and blood do
not reveal such things, but the Spirit of God. They are
hidden from the wise and prudent, but revealed to babes
who love God. Happy are they the eyes of whose heart
are opened to know what is the hope of his calling, what
the riches of his inheritance in the saints, and what the
exceeding greatness of his power toward them that believe !
It is very important that all Christians should be alive to
and possess this power of vision. It is deeper than intel
lectual, since it is spiritual ; it is not the result of reasoning
or learning, but of intuition ; it cannot be acquired in the
school of earthhy science, but is the gift of Him who alone
can open the eyes of the blind, and remove the films of
earthliness that shut out the eternal and unseen. If you
lack it, reader, seek it at the hands of Jesus ; be willing to
do his will, and you shall know. It is a thousand pities
to be blind, and not able to see afar off, when all around
stand the mountains of God in solemn majesty, as the Alps
around the Swiss hostelry, where the traveler arrives after
nightfall, to eat and drink and sleep, unconscious of the
proximity of so much loveliness. It is related of Ampere, the
electrician, who was short-sighted without being aware of
it, that when he became conscious of his defective vision
through the casual use of the eye-glasses of a friend, he
burst into tears as he realized how much he had missed
throughout his life of the wonderful beauty and interest
of the world around him. With more reason will many
of us have to lament our untold loss through that spiritual
near-sightedness of which the Holy Ghost speaks (2 Pet.
i. 9, R.v.).
If, on the other hand, you have the opened eye, you
will not need books of evidences to establish to your satis
faction the truth of our holy religion, the glory of the risen
Lord, the world of the unseen. With the woman of Samaria

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD 113
you will say, "We have seen it for ourselves." No further
proof will be needed than your own spiritual senses afford.
And though a series of well-ordered arguments should be
brought into array to assail your position as a believer, you
would be bold to reply, "Whereas I was blind, now I see."
The patriarchs of old who reached forth their hands to
greet 'the vision of the city that hath foundations, the New
Jerusalem — which all holy souls behold descending out of
heaven from God — furnish the model for spiritual men of
every age ; and they who see these things are indifferent to
the privations of the tent life, or, as in Jeremiah's case, rise
superior to the hatred of man and the privations of a siege.
II. The Use of the Penknife. — Men use the knife to
the Bible in varied ways. Among these are Systems of
Priestcraft and Error. They have done it. They will do
it again. They are wise to do it — I mean wise in their own
interests. For when once the Bible is in the hands of the
people, the false teacher who has deluded them for selfish
purposes must pack. The long reign of the Roman Catho
lic Church was broken as soon as Tyndale, Erasmus, and
Luther opened the Word of God, and the printing-press
scattered it over the world. It is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that as long as possible fires were lit for Bible
burning in every chief city of Europe, and the knife was
freely used to cut out whatever condemned the office of the
pope, or the system to which he belonged. The Vulgate,
with its mutilations and excisions, is a standing evidence
that Jehudi's penknife survived his age.
The next that follows Jehoiakim's practice is the Infidel,
who uses the keen blade of bitter sarcasm and miscalled
reason to destroy the Scriptures. The hostility that mani
fested itself in the winter palace among the princes of this
world has wrought in the halls of earthly learning and sei-

H4 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
ence, instigating similar acts to theirs. The laboratory of
the chemist, the hammer of the mineralogist, the pry of the
geologist, the telescope of the astronomer, the calculations
of the arithmetician, and the explorations of the discoverer,
have all been used in turn as the penknife of destruction.
The Bible is cut up regularly once in each generation by
men like these.
The next are the Higher Critics of our time, who surely
have gone beyond the necessities of the case in their ruth
less use of the knife. Some of them seem to delight in
making havoc of the sacred writings, hacking at the Old
Testament specially, and whittling away from the reputed
work of a Moses, an Isaiah, or a Daniel. There is room
for the honest examination of the fabric of Sacred Script
ure, its language, the evidence furnished in its texture of
the successive hands which have reedited its most ancient
documents ; but this is altogether different to the ruthless
vandalism that wantonly assigns large portions of the Pen
tateuch to the age of Ezra, and the Book of Daniel to the
times of the Maccabees.
We are all tempted to use Jehudi's penknife. It is proba
ble that no one is free from the almost unconscious habit
of evading or toning down certain passages which conflict
with the doctrinal or ecclesiastical position in which we
were reared or which we have assumed.
In our private reading of the Scripture we must beware
of using the penknife. Whole books and tracts of truth
are practically cut out of the Bible of some earnest Chris
tians — passages referring to the Second Advent, with their
summons to awake and gird on the armor of light ; those
that deal with the undying worm, the unquenched fire, and
the inevitable doom of the ungodly ; those that describe
the types and shadows of the ancient law ; or those that
build up massive systems of truth and doctrine, as in the

THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD 115
epistles. But we can only eliminate these things at our
peril. The Bible is like good wheaten bread, which con
tains all the properties necessary to support life. And we
cannot eliminate its starch or sugar, its nitrates or phos
phates, without becoming enfeebled and unhealthy. It is
a golden rule to read the Bible as a whole. Of course
each will have his favorite passages, dark with tears and
use: Psalm xxiii., Isaiah liii., John xiv.; but besides these
there should be the loving and devout study of all Script
ure, which is given by inspiration of God, and is therefore
profitable, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly
furnished to every good work.
III. The Indestructible Word. — Men may destroy
the words and the fabric on which they are written, but
not the Word itself. It is the incorruptible Word of God,
which liveth and abideth, though all flesh wither as grass
and the glory of man as the flower of the field. It must
be sometimes an uncomfortable reflection to those who re
fuse the testimony of the Word of God, who to all intents
and purposes destroy it and despise its remonstrances and
warnings, that their attitude toward the message cannot
affect the reality to which it bears witness.
Jeremiah wrote another roll. The money spent in buy
ing up copies of the Bible to burn at St. Paul's enabled
Tyndale to reissue the Scriptures in a cheaper form and a
better type. And perhaps the most remarkable fact in this
connection is that, in spite of all that has been done to
stamp out the Bible, it exists in millions of copies, and is
circulated among all the nations of the world — not a chap
ter effaced, not a parable dropped out, not a miracle injured,
not a promise scarred. It has been declared over and over
again to be a careless, unauthenticated collection of works
of different periods, having no unity save that given by

116 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
the bookbinder; yet it is with us to-day in unimpaired
authority. And the facts to which Jeremiah bore witness all came
to pass. Neither knife nor fire could arrest the inevitable
doom of king, city, and people. The drunken captain may
cut in pieces the chart that tells of the rocks in the vessel's
course, and put in irons the sailor who calls his attention
to it ; but neither will avert the crash that must ensue un
less the helm is turned. Let those beware who deny the
testimony of Scripture to the retribution of sin and the
wrath of God : these things are as true as the throne of
God and the reward of the redeemed. You may tamper
with and destroy the record, but the stubborn facts remain.

XIII.
®he Bcrhabites.
(Jeremiah xxxv. 6-io.)
" Happy if full of days — but happier far
If, ere we yet discern life's evening star,
Sick of the service of a world that feeds
Its patient drudges with dry chaff and weeds,
We can escape from custom's idiot sway,
To serve the Sovereign we were born to obey." Cowper.
THE march of Nebuchadnezzar on Jerusalem was an
ticipated by incursions of Syrians, Moabites, and the
children of Ammon. These may be compared to the squad
rons of light cavalry used in modern warfare to harass the
enemy and prepare the way for heavier armaments. They
swept up the valleys, massacred the peasantry, devoured the
crops, and spread terror on every hand. The inhabitants,
therefore, of the neighboring country, eager to save their
lives and some relics of their property, left their houses
and lands to the mercy of the invader, and fled for protec
tion to the metropolis, accounting that within the massive
walls of Zion they would find safeguard. What a stir there
must have been as day by day the motley groups pressed
in under the old gateways, gray with age, and sought ac
commodation and food in the already overcrowded tene
ments of the city !
Among the rest came a tribe that excited much curiosity
117

n8 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
by reason of its strange and antique manners. It came in
full force — of men at least. The sheik's name was Jaazaniah
—"he whom Jehovah hears " ; and his brethren and sons
and the heads of other households were with him. They
refused to shelter in the houses or permanent buildings of
the city, but pitched their dusky tents in some open space
within the walls, and there awaited the turn of events.
Their record was an honorable one, and reached far back
into the early days of Hebrew history. When Israel was
passing through the wilderness of Sinai, the tribe of the
Kenites showed them kindness, and this laid the founda
tion of perpetual friendliness between the two peoples.
They seem to have adopted the religious convictions of
Israel, and to have accompanied them into the Land of
Promise. Retaining their integrity as a pastoral people,
the Kenites maintained these friendly relations with Israel
during the intervening centuries ; and it was of this tribe
that the Rechabites, for such was the name of this strange,
tent-loving people, had sprung (Judges iv. 17, 24; 1 Sam.
xv. 6; 1 Chron. ii. 55).
About the time of Elijah, and perhaps largely influenced
by him, the sheik or leader of one branch of the Kenites
was Jonadab, the son of Rechab. He was dismayed at the
abounding corruption and iniquity of the time, and espe
cially of the northern kingdom, then under the fatal spell
of Jezebel's and Ahab's influence, and resembling some rank
jungle in whose steamy air, heavy with fever and poison,
noisome creatures swarm and foul pestilences breed. In
his endeavor to save his people from such a fate, this noble
man, who afterward became Jehu's confederate in extirpat
ing idolatry, bound his people under a solemn pledge to
drink no wine forever ; neither to build houses, nor sow
seed, nor plant vineyards, but to dwell in tents. Two hun
dred and fifty years had passed since then, but when they

THE RECHABITES 119
arrived in Jerusalem they were still true to the traditions
of their race, and with sturdy strength stood out among
the effeminate and idol-loving people of Jerusalem, living
representatives of the noblest and purest days of Hebrew
story. I. Jeremiah's Test of the Rechabites. — So soon as
their arrival was noised abroad and had come to the ears
of Jeremiah, he was seized by a divine impulse to derive
from them a striking object-lesson for his own people.
With an inventiveness which only passionate love could
have suggested, the prophet caught at every incident and
used every method to awaken his people to realize their
true position in the sight of God. Taking the leaders of
the Rechabites with him, he went into the Temple, to a
room belonging to the sons of Hanan, known as a man of
God, immediately adjacent to the room occupied by the
princes, and above that occupied by the gatekeeper.
Probably a little group of Jews, arrested by the prophet's
association with these strange-looking men, followed them
in to watch the proceedings. They were curious witnesses
of the prophet's action, as he caused bowls of wine to be
set before the tribesmen, and cups to be offered them,
that they might dip them in and drink. They also heard
the blunt, unqualified refusal of these quaint, old-fashionecl
Puritans, " We will drink no wine," followed by an ex
planation of the solemn obligation laid on them centuries
before. The moral was obvious. Here were men loyal to the
wish of their ancestor, though he was little more than a
name to them, and refusing the offered sweets in which so
many freely indulged. How great a contrast to the peo
ple of Jerusalem, who persistently disregarded the words
of the living God perpetually remonstrating against their

120 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
sins! The prohibitions of Jonadab were largely arbitrary
and external, while those of Jehovah were corroborated by
the convictions of conscience, and consonant with the
deepest foundations of religion and morality. The voice
of Jonadab was a cry coming faintly from far down the
ages, while Jehovah was ever speaking with each new
dawn, and in the voice of each fresh messenger whom he
rose early to send.
There could be but one result. Judah, eaten through
with the crimes and corruption against which God had
protested in vain, must reap the whirlwind, as she had sown
the wind. There could be no escape from the judgment
which was drawing nearer with every daybreak. If the
people could not heed words of expostulation, of entreaty
and warning, accounting them exaggerated and vain, they
should at least be compelled to admit that not one of God's
threats of vengeance fell impotent on the air or missed its
aim. On the other hand, such devotion to principle, such per
sistent culture of simplicity, frugality, and abstinence, such
literal adherence to the will of the father of their house,
not only carried within them the assurance of perpetuity to
the people who practiced them, but must receive the sig
nature and countersign of the Almighty. " Therefore thus
saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel ; Jonadab the
son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me
forever." This phrase had a very profound significance. It sug
gested, of course, obviously, that the tribe should not cease
to exist. And it is to be noted that Dr. Wolff, the mis
sionary traveler, met a tribe in Arabia who claimed to be
Rechabites and read to him these words of Jeremiah from
an Arabic Bible ; and that Signor Pierotti, near the south
east end of the Dead Sea, met a tribe who also called them-

THE RECHABITES 121
selves Rechabites and quoted these words. But there was
a yet deeper thought. The phrase is often used in Scripture
of priestly service. And may we not infer that where we
meet that devotion to principle and that detachment from
the world which characterized these men, there will always
be a strong religious tone, a knowledge of God, a power
in prayer and intercession, which are the essential charac
teristics of the priest ? This will lead us to thoughts which
are alike suggestive and salutary.
II. The Elements of a Strongly Religious Life. —
The phrase " to stand before God " designates a high-toned
religious life, and includes the knowledge of God, the fac
ulty of executing his commands, and the power of interced
ing for others. The phrase was a favorite one with Elijah,
as expressing the spirit of his great career, and was chosen
by the angel Gabriel as conveying to the maiden of Naza
reth the most certain guaranty of his authority and verac
ity. Surely every reader of these words must desire that
the spirit and attitude of all coming days may be desig
nated thus ! Oh, to stand always before Him, on whose
face the glory of God shines as the sun in his strength !
But if this is to be something more than a vague wish, an
idle dream, three things should be remembered, suggested
by the words of the Rechabites:
(1) There must be Close Adhesion to Great Principles. —
Many superficial reasons might have suggested to the
Rechabites compliance with the prophet's tempting sug
gestion. The wine was before them ; there was no sin
against God in taking it ; the people around had no scru
ples about it ; and the prophet himself invited them. But
against all they stood on the principles which Jonadab
had laid down to guide them, and they did not hesitate
to avow them, let those ridicule who would.

122 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
In contrast to this, it is the general tendency among
men to ask what is the practice of the majority ; what is
done by those in their rank and station ; and what will be
expected of them. We drift with the current. We allow
our lives to be settled by our companions or our whims,
our fancies or our tastes ; and if ever we have a momentary
qualm in contrasting our lives with the standards of primi
tive simplicity, of which Scripture and old biographies are
full, we excuse ourselves by saying that so long as the main
purpose is right the details are unimportant. This reason
ing is wrong. We make a grave mistake in supposing that
the main purpose of our life is something different from
that which reveals itself in details. What we are in the
details of our life that we are really and essentially. The
truest photographs are taken when we are unprepared for
the operation. The true man, therefore, is always settling
his life in its details, as well as in its main direction, accord
ing to great principles. Before we go another step let me
entreat my readers not to allow themselves to do or permit
things simply because custom or taste or public opinion
advocates them, but to bring their entire life to the touch
stone of some elementary law of the kingdom of heaven,
which shall do in the moral what gravitation does in the
physical sphere, ordaining the course of worlds and of
molecules of dust.
And if it be asked, What principle is far-reaching enough
in its scope and powerful enough in its force for so great
a work ? let us ponder what William Law so perpetually
insists upon in his " Serious Call " : " The first and most
fundamental principle of Christianity is an intention to
please God in all our actions. It is because the generality
of Christians have no such intention that they so fall short
of true devotion." And, indeed, when we consider the
characters of the early disciples of Jesus, or those of saints,

THE RECHABITES 123
martyrs, and confessors, must we not admit that they were
as scrupulous in seeking the will of God about the trifles
of their life as the Rechabites were in consulting the will
and pleasure of the dead Jonadab ? The thought of God
was as present with the one as of Jonadab with the other.
And was not this the secret of their strong and noble lives ?
What a revolution would come to us all if it became the
one fixed aim and ambition of our lives to do always those
things that are pleasing in His sight ! It would not make
us less tender in our friendships, or less active in our ser
vice. It would not take the sparkle from the eye, the nerve
from the grasp, or the warm glow from the heart. But i;
would check many a vain word, arrest many a silly jest,
stop much selfish and vainglorious expenditure, and bring
us back to whatsoever things are true, honorable, just, pure,
lovely, and of good report.
(2) Abstinence from the Spirit of the Age. — It was an im
mense gain in every way for the Rechabites to abstain from
wine. Wine was closely associated with the luxury, corrup
tion, and abominable revelries of the time (Isa. xxviii. 1-8).
Their abstinence was not only a protest against the evils
which were honeycombing their age, but was a sure safe
guard against participation in them.
In these days the same principles apply. Whatever may
be said about the use of alcohol in certain forms of sickness
and debilitated health, it is incontrovertible that it is un
necessary as an article of ordinary diet. It is very closely
identified with the vilest practices of impure passion, the
obscenities of the music-hall, the license of the stage, and
the coarse revelry of the race-course. Its fumes fill the card-
room, the billiard-room, and the scene of abandoned vice.
The votaries of sin confess that they could not do as they
do apart from its excitement. Add to all this the incon
testable direct results of the drink traffic in crime, poverty,

1 24 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
misery, suicide, and death — results which Mr. Gladstone
once declared to be more deplorable than those that flow
from famine, pestilence, and war combined. Surely, then,
we shall do well to say with the Rechabites, whoever may
ask us to drink, " We will drink no wine."
But wine may stand for the spirit of the age, its restless
ness, its constant thirst for novelty, for amusement, for fas
cination, its feverish demand for the fresh play, the excit
ing novel, the rush of the season, the magnificent pageant.
It is easier to abstain from alcohol than from this insidious
spirit of our time, which is poured so freely into the air, as
from the vial of some demon sorceress. We might well
refer to this the wise words of the Apostle : " Be not drunk
with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit."
You cannot exorcise Satan by a negation. You must be
preoccupied, prepossessed. And it is only they that are
filled by the Holy Spirit, in his blessed energy, who are
proof against the intoxicating cup of this Circe world.
(3) We must Hold Lightly to the Things around.- — The
Rechabites dwelt in tents. They drove their vast flocks
from place to place, and were content with the simple life
of the wandering shepherd. It was thus that the great
patriarchs had lived before them (Heb. xi. 9, 13). And
ever since their days the tent life has been the chosen
emblem of the life that is so strongly attracted to the other
world as to be lightly attached to this.
It is difficult to say what worldliness consists in. What
would be worldly to some people is an ordinary part of
life's circumstances to others. But all of us are sensible
of ties that hold us to the earth. We may discover what
they are by considering what we cling to ; what we find it
hard to let go, even into the hands of Christ ; what we are
always striving to augment ; what we pride ourselves in.
It may be name, fame, notoriety, pride of fashion, rank,

THE RECHABITES 125
money. But whatever it is, if it hinders us from living on
the highest level, if it is a weight that impedes our speed
heavenward, it should be laid deliberately on God's altar,
that he may do with it as he will, and that we may be able,
without let or hindrance, to be wholly for God.

XIV.
fijibben, but Babiant.
(Jeremiah xxxvi. 26.)
" Be still and strong,
O Man, my Brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong!
That so, as life's appointment issueth,
Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death!"
E. B. Browning.
AFTER Jehoiakim had deliberately cut in pieces the
prophet's roll, and so rejected his warnings and ex
postulations, and when in addition to this he had threat
ened the lives of God's faithful servants, it became clear
that no further good could be gained by reiterating his
messages. Thus the prophet's voice was hushed, appar
ently for the remainder of the reign of this bad and infatu
ated king. This is one of those principles of the divine
government, which is as certain in its operation to-day as
ever, that after a certain time the divine voice, being un
heeded, ceases to speak, and those who will not retain God
in their knowledge are given up to the workings of their
corrupt minds, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
We recall those ominous words, written as an epitaph on
the grave of the first king of Israel : " Samuel came no
more to see Saul until the day of his death," and tlie no
126

HIDDEN, BUT RADIANT 127
less awful words of the apostle of love : " There is a sin
unto death : not concerning this do I say that he should
make request" (1 John v. 16, R.v.).
Into that new and splendid palace of Jehoiakim, whose
spacious halls were ceiled with cedar from Lebanon, lighted
by wide windows, and painted with bright colors, the one
presence never entered which at that time would have
saved the ship of state — as the timely arrival of a pilot
may save an ocean steamer from the fatal ignorance of an
incompetent captain. The false prophets might beguile
the ears of king and people with predictions bred in the
falsehood of their own nature. The strong Egyptian par
tisans might urge on the king alliance with Pharaoh as the
certain cure for the difficulties of their position. But Jere
miah's voice, during the dark and troublous days that suc
ceeded that scene in the palace, and until Jehoiakim's body
was cast forth, unburied and unwept, was still. How did
it fare with the prophet, and what engaged him during
those eventful years ?
I. The Lord Hid Him. — What that precisely means it
is impossible to say. Was there a John of Gaunt for this
Wycliffe, an elector of Saxony for this Luther ? Did Ahi-
kam, who had before interposed on his behalf, or his sons
— Gemariah, who lent Jeremiah his room in the Temple for
the reading of his roll, and Gedaliah, who became governor
of Judah after Zedekiah's deportation — take the prophet
under their care? Or was this hiding something more
divine and blessed still? In any case, whether through
the intervention of second causes or directly, Jeremiah was
hidden in the covert of the divine presence from the plot-
tings of man, and was kept secretly in a pavilion from the
strife of tongues. In his first alarm he had said, " I am
cut off from before thine eyes." Nevertheless, God had

128 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
heard the voice of his supplication and had preserved his
faithful servant.
These divine hidings are needed by us all. We must
obey the voice that cries to us, as it did to Elijah, " Get
thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself."
We are too prominent, too self-important, too conscious of
ourselves. Our shadows fall too much in front of us, and
we see them on the sand, clear-cut and defined. We need
to keep our faces sunward, that our shadow may be well
out of sight. And God must sometimes hide us in the sick-
chamber, the valley of shadow, the cleft of the rock. He
calls us to Zarephath or Carmel, to the privacy of obscu
rity or of solitude. It is only when self is hidden in the
darkness of the grave that the true light shines upon our
hearts, or the power of the true life emanates from our acts.
How often has some timid nature sheltered and hidden
itself in a stronger personality to which it was devotedly
attached, so that it could bear unmoved the stare of indif
ference, the affectation of superiority, the sarcastic taunt,
the injurious act ! So when the one passion of our nature
is Godward, when his smile is our sufficient reward, when
we have no aim than to be well-pleasing in his sight, we
are hidden ; and from our retreat in the burning glory of
his light we can look out with equanimity on the forms
of dreaded evils as they pass us by.
There is a literal sense also, O tried and tempted be
liever, in which God will hide you. It is stated that on one
occasion when the dragoons of Claverhouse were scouring
the mountains of Scotland in search of the Covenanters, a
little party of these godly folk, gathered on the hillside for
prayer, must have fallen into their hands, had not a cloud
suddenly settled down, effectually concealing them from
their pursuers. Thus the Son of God still interposes for
his own. Live to him alone. Be a polished shaft hidden

HIDDEN, BUT RADIANT 129
in the hollow of his hand. Abide in him. Hark ! he says
to thee as David to Abiathar, " Abide thou with me, fear
not : for he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life : but with
me thou shalt be in safeguard."
II. He Reedited his Prophecies. — To this period we
may refer the divine injunction : " Thus speaketh the Lord
God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I
have spoken unto thee in a book " (xxx. 2). It may be
that throughout this period Baruch continued to act as
his faithful amanuensis and, scribe. He, at least, was cer
tainly included in the divine hidings (xxxvi. 26-32). It
was at great cost to his earthly prospects. He came of
a good family, his brother being Seraiah, who held high
office under King Zedekiah, and he cherished the ambi
tion of distinguishing himself among his compeers. " He
sought great things for himself." But he was reconciled
to the lot of suffering and sorrow to which his close identi
fication with Jeremiah led him by a special revelation as
suring him of the speedy overthrow of the state, and that
in the general chaos he would escape with his life (xiv.).
By the aid of this faithful friend Jeremiah gathered to
gether the prophecies which he had uttered on various
occasions, and put them in order, specially elaborating the
predictions given in the fourth year of Jehoiakim against
the surrounding nations. The word of the Lord came to
him concerning the Philistines and Moab, and the children
of Ammon and Edom, Damascus and Kedar. And the
devout student may well pause to read again the marvelous
paragraphs which foretell the fate of these nations, beneath
the all-desolating incursions of Nebuchadnezzar and his
ruthless soldiers. "Thou art my battle-ax and weapons
of war," said the prophet, addressing the great king in Je
hovah's name : " for with thee will I break in pieces the na-

13° JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
tions, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms " (see chapters
xlvii. to xlix. 33).
This time of Jeremiah's seclusion was therefore not lost
to the world. It was fruitful as Bunyan's in Bedford Jail,
Luther's in the Wartburg, Madame Guyon's in the Bastille.
Unseen, the prophet busied himself, as the night settled
down on his country, in kindling the sure light of prophecy
that should cast its radiant beams over the dark waters of
time until the day should dawn and the day-star glimmer
out in the Eastern sky. Yield your whole nature to Godj
and be sure that he will bring all of it, and every moment,
under his productive cultivation, so that it shall become
like one of the old-fashioned wall-inclosed country gar
dens, every square inch of which yields some produce to
the skillful hand of its owner.
III. He Made a Double Journey to Babylon. — To
this period we must also refer the incident of the linen
girdle, because the discourse founded on it was delivered
during the three months' reign of Jehoiachin, which was alto
gether too brief to admit of so long a journey as was nec
essary for the purposes on which the prophet was sent (xiii.,
notably verse 18).
The Israelite was extremely particular as to cleanliness,
and especially of linen. It therefore attracted universal
notice that Jeremiah at a certain period wore a newly pur
chased linen girdle without washing it. When it was soiled
and filthy he took it, under divine direction, to the river
Euphrates, and there buried it in a hole of the rock. Some
have thought that this is the description of a vision, or that
some place nearer than the Euphrates, which was two hun
dred and fifty miles distant, is intended. But there seems
no good reason for questioning the literal interpretation of
the narrative as given by the prophet. There was no spe-

HIDDEN, BUT RADIANT 131
cial demand for his presence in Jerusalem, but the reverse.
Time was no object in comparison with the vividness of
the impression that would be produced. Besides, large
purposes were served by his becoming familiarized with
the condition of the exiles in Babylon, and with the drift
of events there. In the prophecies which he delivered
afterward on the fall of Babylon, there are touches of de
scription so minute and accurate as could hardly have been
given by one who was not familiar with the city from per
sonal observation.
After his return from Babylon "many days" passed.
Indeed, his second journey to recover his marred girdle
may have been so timed by Almighty Providence as to
secure his absence from the city during the last scene of
Jehoiakim's sad and tragic history, and to bring him thither
again as Jehoiachin began his brief reign. But that rotted
piece of linen, held up before the eyes of his people, told
its own sad story. Judah and Jerusalem might have been
to Jehovah for a name, a praise, and a glory, and he would
have caused them to cleave unto him, but they would not
hear ; they went after other gods to serve and worship them.
Therefore they were destined to be cast aside as worthless
and unprofitable.
The lesson of this double journey, which must have
meant about a thousand miles on foot, teaches us that no
exertion on our part should be considered excessive if we
can execute the commissions of our King. Long before,
when a comparative child, Jeremiah had been summoned
to perform God's errands for him (i. 7), and it was not for
him to complain if any special errand took him far afield,
or involved journeying under scorching suns and sleeping
in the night-dews. When Jesus bids us go into all the
world, he means it, and we may not plead before him the
distance and hardships of the way. It is enough if he has

I32 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
said, "Go to Euphrates." When once we are sure of this
we must imitate the prophet, who says, with charming sim
plicity, " So I went to Euphrates."
IV. He had Visions of the New Covenant. — There
is much reason for supposing that it was in this time of
seclusion that Jeremiah's eyes were opened to see a spiritual
truth which was far in advance of any contemporary reve
lation, and was destined to become the mold into which
some of the richest ore of gospel truth should be poured.
It was not the last time when mortal eyes were closed in
order to see — shielded from the glare of this world that they
might behold the light that never shone on sea or shore.
The blind Milton sang of Paradise lost and regained.
The exquisite poem to which we must now turn is con
tained in chapters thirty and thirty-one, and consists of
some seven stanzas. The prophet is no longer concerned
with Judah alone ; his thought embraces the ten tribes also
— Israel he calls them, or Ephraim, which one hundred
and seventy years before had been carried away captive to
Nineveh. But his heart exults as he anticipates the return
of the entire people from the land of the north, baptized
through suffering into a purer, nobler life.
On many of the exquisite thoughts and phrases of this
joyful outburst we might long and profitably dwell. We
can only cull a few flowerets, and leave them to tell the
wealth of the garden from which they come :
"Fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord;
neither be dismayed, O Israel : for, lo, I will save thee from
afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity."
"I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of
thy wounds, saith the Lord."
"Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: there
fore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee. Again I will

HIDDEN, BUT RADIANT 133
build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel :
thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go
forth in the dances of them that make merry."
" My people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith
the Lord."
Transported by words like these, as he lay in prophetic
trance, it is not wonderful that Jeremiah experienced, after
a spiritual sort, the ecstatic joy which visits the soul when
between sleeping and waking it realizes that its dearest
hopes are being fulfilled. " Upon this I awaked, and be
held ; and my sleep was sweet unto me" (xxxi. 26).
But the more stupendous revelation was to follow. The
dread commands of Moses, the elaborate forms of Temple
ritual, the pleadings of Deuteronomy, enforced as they
had been by the words of contemporary prophets, had all
failed to withhold the people from backsliding. What hope
was there that the distant future would not repeat the bitter
story of the past ? But God, who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness, shined into his servant's heart, and
unveiled the glory of the New Covenant, which was to be
sealed by the blood of the cross — " the New Testament in
my blood," as Jesus called it : a covenant which would
no longer depend on man's obedience to "Thou shalt" and
"Thou shalt not," but would glisten with the seven-times
repeated I will of God (xxxi. 31-34 ; Luke xxii. 20 ; Heb.
viii. 8-12).
That the law of God should not be without as a precept,
but within, as though inwrought into the very structure of
the heart and will ; that religion should consist primarily in
what God was to his child, rather than in what the child said
or did toward him ; that neither priest nor Levite should be
needed any more, since each soul would possess the right
of direct intercourse with its Lord ; that sin should be
completely forgiven, as if it had never been — this was the

134 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
vision which shone in on the prophet's heart, and is realized
in Christ for all who belong to him by faith. This blessed
covenant shall yet gather Israel within its provisions.
It is a serious question how far that covenant has been
fulfilled in our experience. We are enamored with the life
it foreshadows, and sometimes we think that our inward
parts and hearts do bear its sacred inscriptions, as did the
stone slabs of Sinai the writing of the decalogue. But we
become suddenly conscious of some overwhelming irrup
tion of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, as though a
sewer were to pour forth its filth over the mosaic-work of
some splendid pavement.
Such experiences stagger, but they should not discour
age us. They probably show, not that God has not com
menced his divine work, but that we have momentarily
turned aside from him to make some effort of our own, or
to pride ourselves on what has been accomplished. Let
us turn back to him. Let us open our hearts and inward
parts to his finger. Let us in meek humility wait for him
to grave even more deeply and legibly his secret thoughts
upon us. Let us believe that he is doing it. Let us reckon
on him to perfect the legend, and to keep it clear and clean.
Thus we shall know God. The dead past will bury its
dead. The sins and iniquities of former days will be strewn
on the shore, like the corpses of the Egyptians from whom
Israel had got free. And then our hearts shall go out in
the dance ; our mourning will be turned into joy ; our soul
shall be as a watered garden ; and God will comfort us,
making us rejoice from our sorrow, and enabling us to reap
in joy what we sowed in tears (xxxi. 10-14).

XV.
&l)e Ulinistrg of Destruction.
(Jeremiah xxvii.-xxix.)
" Ours the shame to understand
That the world prefers the lie;
That, with medicine in her hand,
She will sink and choose to die !
Ours the agonizing sense
Of the heaven this earth might be,
If, from their blank indifference,
Men woke one hour and felt as we!"
Houghton.
WHEN Jeremiah was first summoned to the work of
prophet, it was summarized under six distinct divis
ions. He was set over nations and kingdoms to pluck
up, and to break down, and to destroy, and to overthrow,
to build, and to plant (i. 10). Two thirds of his work was
therefore in the direction of destruction. It is not pleas
ant or easy work. No one would choose to stand amid
the choking dust of the crumbling brickwork, which is
being destroyed to make way for some palatial structure to
be erected on the site. Vested interests, long-established
abuses, lucrative wrongs, cry out loudly against any attempt
to interfere with their existence. But Elijah must precede
Elisha, and John the Baptist must prepare the way for
Christ. Before the seed-sowing, the plow ; before the out
burst of the spring, the stern disintegration of winter, rub-
'35

I36 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
bing the soil to powder in its mighty hands. Such was
the work that fell to the lot of Jeremiah.
I. The Work of Demolition. — (i) Jehoiakim. — When
Josiah died the whole land mourned. Each citizen felt
personally bereaved, and appropriated the plaintive cries
of professional mourners, saying, "Ah, my brother !" and
"Ah, sister ! " The air was full of the words, "Ah, lord ! "
"Ah, the glory of Israel ! " But Jeremiah foretold that at
the death of Jehoiakim there should be no such expression :
" He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and
cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." And again,
somewhat later, when the king in impious defiance had
burned the roll, the prophet said: "He shall have none to
sit upon the throne of David : and his dead body shall be
cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the
frost" (xxii. 13—19; xxxvi. 29—31).
The words of the prophet carried with them the impri
matur of Jehovah. They pronounced the inevitable sen
tence which he executed. And therefore, though we have
no certain record of the manner of it, it is more than prob
able that on his return from his second journey to Babylon
Jeremiah received the tidings of the death of his inveterate
foe. There are several traditions as to his death — one that
he was assassinated in the streets of Jerusalem ; another
that he fell in a skirmish with raiders, who had been in
cited by Nebuchadnezzar to desolate the neighborhood of
Jerusalem ; another that he was enticed to the camp of the
king of Babylon, and there treacherously murdered — but
he died as he lived, dishonorably and miserably.
(2) Jeconiah. — His was a reign like Napoleon's after his
return from Elba — of one hundred days. He was eighteen
when he was called to the throne, and he occupied it for
three months and ten clays (2 Chron. xxxvi. 9) ; but in that

THE MINISTRY OF DESTRUCTION 137
brief time he was able to show the drift of his character.
" He did evil in the sight of the Lord." His mother,
Nehushta, daughter of Elnathan, whose hands had been
imbrued in the murder of Urijah, and the strong heathen
party who dominated the policy of the court, between them
molded the young monarch to their will.
Jeremiah uttered words of awful significance. Passing
through the streets he showed the marred linen girdle, and
foretold the doom of the king and queen-mother. "Sit
down," he cried, " in the dust ; for the crown of royalty
shall be rolled from your brow to the ground. The cities
in the south country, the beautiful flock of towns and vil
lages, are already in the hands of the invader, and the
whole land shall shortly be carried into captivity, because
of the abominations, the pollution, the idolatries that have
been perpetrated on the hills of the field." Then, coming
to closer dealings with the royal pair, he said that Coniah
should be given into the hands of them that sought his life,
and of those of whom he was afraid ; that Jehovah would
cast his mother and himself, like a despised, broken vessel,
into another country, where they were not born ; that there
they should die ; and that there should be no return to the
land they loved (xiii. 18-21 ; xxii. 28-30).
Thus, too, it befell. Such was the bitter fierceness of
the Chaldeans, who were again besieging the city to punish
Jehoiakim's perfidy, that nothing would appease them but
the surrender of the persons of the king and his mother.
There was no alternative ; and so, Josephus tells us, a sad
procession was formed, and through a gateway, which
afterward bore the king's name, but was bricked up so
that none might pass by a path which had been the scene
of such a disaster, the king, his mother, the nobles and offi
cials, went forth to the Chaldean camp, and sat down on
the ground, their persons robed in black and their faces

138 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
veiled. By this time Nebuchadnezzar had returned from
fighting against Pharaoh Necho, who had marched to the
relief of his ally, but had been finally quelled ; and he re
ceived in person the submission of the royal fugitives
(2 Kings xxiv. 7).
The spoliation of the city followed. The Temple was
stripped of its gold and treasures. All the princes and the
mighty men of valor, the craftsmen and the smiths, the
king's harem and court officials, were manacled in long
lines, and torn from their beloved country, which the
majority of them were never again to behold. Ezekiel
was one of that sad procession, and it seemed as though a
pitiful wail arose from the whole country — from Lebanon
and Bashan and Abarim — as the exiles wended their way
to their distant destination. And the prophet wept sore,
his eye ran down with tears, because the Lord's flock was
taken captive.
(3) The Prophets. — The prophets were a large and influ
ential class. Dating from the days of Samuel, their schools
had poured forth a succession of men who occupied a
unique position in the land as the representatives of God.
But in the degenerate days of which we are now writing,
when the kingdom of Judah was rapidly tottering to its
fall, they seem to have been deeply infected by the prevail
ing vices of their time. They were, as Isaiah says, "dumb
dogs which could not bark." Greedy and drunken, lazy
and dissolute, dreaming, lying down, and loving to slum
ber, they denied the Lord, and said, when Jeremiah spoke,
" It is not he." They had become wind, and the word of
God was not in them (Isa. Ivi. 9-12 ; Jer. v. 12, 13).
It must have been very painful for Jeremiah to oppose
them and counteract their influence on the people ; but he
had no alternative. His heart was broken and his bones
shook ; he was in a stupor like a drunken man, and like a

THE MINISTRY OF DESTRUCTION 139
man whom wine had overcome, for both prophet and priest
were profane, and in God's own house wickedness was
rife. Listen to these terrible words, spoken in the name
of Jehovah : " I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem
a horrible thing : they commit adultery, and walk in lies :
they strengthen also the hands of evil-doers, that none
doth return from his wickedness : they are all of them unto
me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah "
(xxiii. 9-14).
Jeremiah entreated his people not to hearken to these
men, who spoke the vision of their own heart, and not out
of the mouth of the Lord. Their fatal crime was to live
on the traditions of the past and to encourage even those
who walked in the stubbornness of their hearts, by assuring
them that no evil should come on them. They deliberately
set themselves to lessen the power of Jeremiah's appeals
and protestations by the promulgation of their own lying
dreams, as though they, and not he, were in Jehovah's
secrets. Matters came to a pass shortly after the deportation of
Jeconiah : Hananiah, of Gibeon, which was one of the
priestly settlements, rose up and publicly contradicted Jere
miah when he was speaking in the Temple in the presence
of the priests and of all the people. Using the holy name
of Jehovah, he declared it had been divinely revealed to
him that in two years Jeconiah and all the captives, and
all the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had taken
away, would come again. Instantly Jeremiah spoke up
from amid the crowd. "Amen," he cried: " would that it
might be so ; would that Jehovah might bring again the
captivity ; but it shall not be ; nay, it cannot be, without
canceling words that have been uttered by him through
the prophets before me, and of old."
Not content, however, with his words, the false prophet

HO JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
snatched from Jeremiah's shoulders the wooden yoke which
he carried for the purpose of perpetually reminding his peo
ple and the neighboring nations that they must serve the
king of Babylon until the appointed time had gone. He
broke it in twain, saying that similarly God within two
years would break Nebuchadnezzar's yoke. Jeremiah did
not prolong the altercation, but privately told Hananiah
that the yoke of wood would be replaced by one of iron,
and that he was causing the people to trust a lie. " This
year thou shalt die," he said, as he turned away, and two
months after the false prophet was a corpse.
(4) The Surrounding Nations. — On two occasions Jere
miah protested against a combination of the surrounding
nations to resist the growing power of Babylon, which
without doubt was fostered by the neighboring power of
Egypt. On the first occasion he said that they would have
to drink the cup of the Lord's fury ; and on the second,
that they must bear the yoke of Babylon. " Now have I
given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar
the king of Babylon, my servant. . . . And all nations shall
serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the very time
of his land come " (Jer. xxv. and xxvii.).
All this must have laid the prophet open to the charge
of the want of patriotism : his words weakened the people
of the land ; his influence withheld them from joining a
great league of emancipation. But he had no alternative.
He had no alternative than to be spokesman of that great
word of Jehovah, " I will overturn, overturn, overturn."
(5) The Exiles. — The false prophets had suffered the fate
of their nation, and were with the rest in captivity ; they at
once endeavored to raise the hopes of the exiles by prophe
sying a speedy return. " It is of no use," they said in
effect, " to build houses, or plant gardens, or enter into
marriage relations. In a short time we shall be back again

THE MINISTRY OF DESTRUCTION 141
in Jerusalem." The ringleaders were Zedekiah and Ahab,
men of grossly immoral life, who were made an example
of by being roasted alive (xxix. 21-23). Still the ferment
continued, and the people refused to settle down in content
ment with the conditions of their captivity.
Jeremiah, therefore, wrote a letter, which was intrusted
to two men of high rank, friendly to himself, whom Zede
kiah, the uncle and successor of Jeconiah, sent to Babylon
with assurances of his fidelity. "Yield to the will of God,"
was the burden of the letter. " Build, plant, settle." "Seek
the peace of the city whither God has caused you to be
carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it : for
in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." When Shemaiah,
one of these false prophets, heard this letter, he wrote off
in hot haste to Zephaniah, who was now high priest, and
demanded that the prophet should be put into stocks, and
his head into a collar, as a madman. The high priest,
however, contented himself with reading the letter to Jere
miah, who replied by sending a second letter to the exiles,
assuring them that God would punish Shemaiah and his
seed, so that he should not have a son to perpetuate his
name, and should not see the good which would come at
the end of the predestined time (xxix.).
These denunciations were fraught with terror, and equally
terrible was the fate which befell these men. It may be
said, " Surely they were patriots, eager for the deliverance
of their people. They were fanatical enthusiasts, not in
tentional criminals. They mistook their hopes for revela
tions." But it should be remembered that they were also
convicted of immoral and evil lives. Their sins had blunted
their perceptions of the divine voice, while their words
pandered to their people's sins and encouraged them in
their lewd idolatries. It was as vicious and fallen men, as
well as false prophets, that they incurred the awful woes

H2 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
which befell them, both from the lip of the prophet and
the hand of the Almighty.
II. His Coadjutor. — While Jeremiah was exercising
this ministry of destruction in utter loneliness and isola
tion, his heart must have often misgiven him. Remember
that he loved his country with all the passionate patriotism
of which the Jewish nature was capable, and which ex
presses itself so plaintively in the Book of Lamentations.
Matthew Henry says, " It is not easy to preach Christ
crucified in a crucified spirit." But Jeremiah did a harder
thing. Though for forty years he was constantly in antago
nism with the sins and vices of the people, the fountain of
tears within his soul seems never to have dried up or be
come frozen over. He preached the terrors of Sinai with
the pathos of Calvary.
It was just because he loved so much that he suffered so
keenly. And this may comfort others in their dark sorrow
and despair for their fellows. They say that their natures
are too tender and affectionate, and that they feel every.
thing too keenly, as though to infer that they would wish
to have been clothed in tougher skin and cast in a rougher
mold. But surely it would be a fatal mistake to barter a
tender heart, with its faculty of suffering, for a callous one
without that liability. "Our sorrow," says Carlyle, "is the
inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair
measures what capability and height of claim we have to
hope. Black smoke, as of Tophet, filling all your universe,
it can yet by true heart-energy become flame and brilliancy
of heaven. Courage ! "
You fear to love lest you may have to suffer ; but, ah,
how infinitely you lose ! You may have an immunity
from one sort of pain, but you certainly incur the pain of
a selfish, mean, and miserly soul. You miss the valleys

THE MINISTRY OF DESTRUCTION M3
of shadow, but you also miss the heights of transfiguration,
You save your life, but you lose it. Suppose that Jere
miah had put away the heavenly summons, and had lived
in the sequestered ease of Anathoth : he might have secured
a respectable and peaceable life, but Jehovah would never
have spoken to him ; the unseen and eternal would never
have unfolded to his vision ; he would never have felt the
supreme satisfaction of knowing that he had done his best ;
he would never have shone like a star amid the darkening
clouds of Jerusalem's fall ; he would have missed the hero's
crown, the Master's " Well done," and the exceeding great
reward. And God sent him an ally and comrade. In the heart
of the exiles Ezekiel arose, uttering the same messages,
though clothed in the superb imagery of his gorgeous im
agination. He, too, denounced his people's sins, advised
them to settle in the land of exile, and spoke of the cer
tain doom of the people and city. In the mouth of these
two witnesses every word was established. Like well-at
tuned instruments, they symphonized, as our Lord said kin
dred souls must, when they ask concerning some heavenly
gift. They were like the two olive-trees and the two can
dlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth. They had
power with God and man ; shutting the heaven, turning
the waters into blood, and smiting the earth with a curse.
So the beast made war with them, as he always will. Theirs
was no easy task, for they were hated by those whom their
words tormented. But God has long since called them to
his throne, where they stand in the foremost rank of those
who, having fulfilled the will of God, have received his
welcome and reward.
III. The Need of this Ministry. — It must be fulfilled
with the unconverted. For lack of it much gospel effort

'44 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
fails. Of what use are appeals to come to Jesus until the
sinner has been led to see the awful peril which he has in
curred ? Of what avail to extol the balm of Gilead until
the soul has heard and accepted the diagnosis of its fatal
condition ? Of what advantage to offer a seat in the life
boat, so long as the sailor is full of confidence in his ship,
and is unaware of its crazy and unseaworthy condition ?
One of the most important ministries of the servant of God
is to destroy false confidence, to pull down refuges of lies,
and to show the utter futility of venturing on the sea of
eternity in any other craft than that which Christ launched
from the cross of Calvary.
It is a great mistake to heal the wound of the heart too
lightly. The consolations of the gospel are very well ; but
they must be withheld until men have seen their state be
fore God, and have been held over the mouth of the
bottomless pit of their own sin. The greatest revivals
always begin in a thorough preaching of the law, press
ing home its demands upon the consciences of the un
godly. Nor is it enough to dwell in general denuncia
tion ; we must particularize till conscience cries, " Thou
art the man ! "
77 must be fulfilled with those who lack assurance. When
men say that they cannot believe, it is probably because
they are harboring some evil thing in their hearts, or are
conscious of some unrepaired wrong in their lives. These
must be dealt with. There must be the righting, so far
as possible, of ancient injuries ; the restitution of ill-gotten
gains ; the seeking of forgiveness ; the adjustment of wrong.
The fixed purpose to do this, when an opportunity presents
itself, will be sufficient to remove the stumbling-block to
faith, which will gush out with the sparkle and song of an
imprisoned brook. The inability to realize acceptance with
God very often points to something that is grieving the

THE MINISTRY OF DESTRUCTION 145
Spirit, and at such times the searching ministry of probing
and testing and demolition is invaluable.
It must be fulfilled in the higher attainments of the divine
life. As our obedience grows our light will grow. And in
the growing dawn we shall become aware of evils that had
passed without our notice. The Holy Spirit will lead us
to discriminate between the wrong and the right, and re
veal what may be hindering us. Then as he destroys one
subterfuge after another, plows up the fallow ground, dis
inters the buried secrets, reveals us to ourselves, we .nay
gratefully accept his ministry, which destroys to build, which
overthrows to plant, which leads us through the grave that
he may minister eternal life. Nor must we overlook the
responsibility of exhorting one another, of urging to re
pentance, and so much the more as we see the day ap
proaching.

XVI.
Jerenriab/s (ftranbest (S)oe.
(Jeremiah li.)
" God spake, and gave us the word to keep;
Bade never fold the hands, nor sleep
'Mid a faithless world — at watch and ward,
Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.
By his servant Moses the watch was set :
Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet."
Browning.
IT was a very deserted Jerusalem in which Jeremiah
dwelt, after King Jehoiachin, his household and court,
princes and mighty men of valor, had been carried off to
Babylon. It was impossible to take ten thousand of those
that constituted the bone and muscle of the state without
leaving an attenuated and weakened residuum. Still the
fertility and natural resources of the land were so consid
erable as to give hope of its comparative prosperity, as a
trailing vine dependent on Babylon (Ezek. xvii.).
Mattaniah, the third son of Josiah — who was a boy of
ten years of age when tidings came of the awful catas
trophe at Megiddo, but who was now in his twenty-first
year — was called to the throne by the conqueror, and re
quired to hold it under a solemn oath of allegiance, which
was asseverated and sanctioned by an appeal to Jehovah
himself. It was as though the heathen monarch thought
to make insubordination impossible on the part of the
146

JEREMIAH'S GRANDEST ODE 147
young monarch, since his word of honor was ratified under
such solemn and august conditions — conditions which under
similar circumstances the heathen king would probably
have felt binding and final. Alas! how often heathen men
have attached an importance to religious appeals which has
shamed religious professors ! And how often they must
have marveled that we could so lightly disregard them !
(2 Chron. xxxvi. 13; Ezek. xvii. 13).
At the instance of his conqueror the young king took
the name Zedekiah, " the righteousness of Jehovah." It
was an auspicious sign ; every encouragement was given
him to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious father.
And throughout his reign he gave evident tokens of desir
ing better things ; but he was weak and irresolute, lacking
the strength of purpose necessary to assert himself for good
amid the confused counsels that agitated his court. He
respected Jeremiah, but did not dare publicly to espouse
his cause, showing him his royal favor by stealth.
Meanwhile the kingdom was violently agitated by rumors
from every side, which encouraged the hope that ere long
the power of Babylon would be broken and the exiles re
turn. These thoughts were rife among the exiles them
selves, as we have seen ; they were diligently fostered by
the false prophets, who gladly fell in with the current of
the popular wish ; and there seem to have been various
political considerations which favored the expectation of a
speedy reversal of conditions that chafed the proud Jewish
heart beyond endurance.
About this time there was a revolt in Elam against Baby
lon. What if this should spread until the empire itself be
came disintegrated ! But Jeremiah, by the voice of God,
said, " It shall not be : the bow of Elam shall be broken,
her king and princes destroyed, her people scattered toward
the four winds of heaven " (xlix. 34-39).

148 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
Then there was the seething discontent of the neighbor
ing peoples, who, though they had accompanied the in
vader as allies, were eager to regain their independence,
and desired to draw Judah into one vast confederacy, with
Egypt as its base. " No," said Jeremiah, " it must not be :
Nebuchadnezzar is doing the behest of Jehovah ; all the
nations are to serve him, and his son, and his son's son "
(xxvii. 6, 7). Perhaps it was at Jeremiah's suggestion that
Zedekiah at this time made a journey to Babylon to pay
homage to his suzerain and assure him of his fidelity.
All through the troubles that followed Jeremiah pursued
the same policy. He asserted that the state of the cap
tives in Babylon, as compared with that of the remnant
at Jerusalem, was as good figs to bad (xxiv.) ; when Pha
raoh's army produced a temporary diversion and compelled
the Chaldeans to draw off, he said that they would cer
tainly return, set fire to palace and Temple, and burn the
city (xxxvii.), and his policy was so well known among the
Chaldeans that in the final overthrow they gave him his
life and allowed him to choose where he would dwell (xl.).
Often it must have seemed to his choicest friends as
though his advice were pusillanimous and wanting in the
courage of faith. Did he really favor Babylon above Jeru
salem? Was he traitorous to the best interests of his peo
ple? But if ever they entertained such questionings they
must have been suddenly and completely disillusionized
when he summoned them to hear the tremendous indict
ment he had composed against Babylon in the early months
of Zedekiah's reign, together with the graphic description
of its fall. A copy of this prophecy was intrusted to
Seraiah, the chief chamberlain, who went in the train of
Zedekiah to Babylon, with instructions that he should read
it privately to the exiles, and then, weighting it with a
stone, cast it into the midst of the Euphrates with the sol-

JEREMIAH'S GRANDEST ODE 149
emn words, that must have thrilled the bystanders : " Thus
shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again, because of the
evil which God will bring upon her: and her might shall
wax faint " (li. 59-64).
I. The Prophecy of the Fall of Babylon. — The
Glory of Babylon. — In glowing imagery Jeremiah depicts
her glory and beauty. She had been a golden cup in the
hand of Jehovah, his battle-ax and weapons of war. Her
influence was carried far and wide. She dwelt by many
waters, rich in treasure, and the wonder of the earth. Like
a mighty tree, she stretched her branches over the sur
rounding lands. Queen of the nations, she was at ease
and thought to see trouble no more. " Is not this great
Babylon," her greatest monarch cried, "which I have built
for the royal dwelling-place by the might of my power,
and for the glory of my majesty ? "
The Divine Controversy. — The Almighty had used her for
great purposes of disintegration, doing among the nations
much the same sort of work that the icebergs did among
the rocks of the primitive world, or that the frosts do each
winter in pulverizing the dust of the earth. But she had
abused for unrighteous and selfish ends the power which
God had intrusted to her. Her execution of the divine
purpose, her administration of the divine decrees, had been
cruel in the extreme. The track of her armies had been
marked with ruthless and wanton bloodshed. She had
floated to the eminence of another Ararat, on the waters
of another flood, an ocean of human suffering. And
therefore Jehovah set nets for her, and caught her as a
wild beast. He opened his armory and brought out the
weapons of his wrath.
But God was especially against Babylon for her treat
ment of his people. The inhabitants of Zion are intro-

'5° JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
duced, crying, "The king of Babylon has devoured us, he
hath crushed us, and he hath filled himself with our delica
cies. The violence done to me and mine be upon Babylon."
Therefore the Most High would take up their cause and
take vengeance on their behalf. " As Babylon caused the
slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of
all the earth : for the Lord is a God of recompenses ; he
shall surely requite."
77?^ Summons to her Foes. — The standard is reared, and
around it, at the sounding of the trumpet, the nations
gather. The wild tribes of Ararat and Armenia are there,
the kings of the Medes, the governors thereof, and all the
lands of her empire. The sure-footed shaggy horses of
the mountaineers are like the rough locusts that fill the
land with their countless multitudes. Sacrifices are offered
to propitiate the gods of battle, and the tide of invasion
begins to flow against and around the massive walls of the
city. The very earth trembles beneath the weight of the
armaments and the tread of the troops. " Behold," the
prophet cries, " a people cometh from the north, and a great
nation, and many kings shall be stirred up from the utter
most parts of the earth. They lay hold on bow and spear :
they are cruel, and have no mercy : their voice roareth like
the sea, and they ride upon horses, every one set in array,
as a man to the battle, against thee, O daughter of Baby
lon" (1. 41, 42, R.v.).
The Attack. — The archers invest the city on every side
so that none may escape. They are bidden to shoot at
her and not spare their arrows. Now the battle-shout is
raised, and an assault is made against her walls. See! she
submits ; she gives her hand in token ; her bulwarks are
fallen ; the bars of her gates are broken through ; her walls
are thrown down ; the mighty men of Babylon have for
borne to fight ; their might has failed ; they have become as

JEREMIAH'S GRANDEST ODE 151
women. Lo! the fire breaks out amid her dwelling-places.
The messengers, running with similar tidings from different
quarters of the city, come to show the king of Babylon
that the fords are in the hand of the foe and that the city
is taken. The Overthrow of the City. — Then the captured city is
given up to the savage soldiery. Nameless wrongs are
inflicted on the defenceless and weak. There is plunder
enough to satisfy the most rapacious. Her granaries are
despoiled, her treasuries ransacked, her stores winnowed.
AU the captive peoples who had been held by her in cruel
bondage go free, and especially the Jews. " Let us for
sake her," they cry, " and let us go every one into his own
country : for her judgment reacheth unto heaven, and is
lifted up even to the skies."
" And now her cities are become a desolation, a dry land,
and a desert, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth
any son of man pass through ; but the jackals dwell there,
and it lies waste from generation to generation, as when God
overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbor cities
thereof." Such were the predictions of Jeremiah concerning the
greatest city which perhaps the world has ever seen, and
which was then rising to the zenith of her power and glory.
Seventy years were to pass before his words would be ful
filled ; but history itself could hardly be more definite and
precise. Those who can compare this prophecy with the
story of the fall of Babylon, and with the researches of
Layard, will find how exactly every detail was repeated,
even to the burning of the reeds in the river-bed, the meet
ing of post with post on the night of its fall, the deep
stupor with which the fumes of wine had dazed the brave
men of Babylon, and the utter desolation which for cen
turies has reigned over her site.

i52 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
" They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of
silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. In the
same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote
over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall
of the king's palace. ... In that night was Belshazzar the
king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took
the kingdom."
II. Babylon the Great. — In every age of the world
Babylon has had its dounterpart. Over against the line of
Seth, with its reverence for God, was that of Cain, where
arts and science were cradled and nurtured. Babel's tower
cast its shadow over the primitive races of mankind. Over
against Shem was Ham ; over against Abraham, Chedor
laomer ; over against Israel, Nineveh ; over against Jeru
salem, Babylon ; over against the Church, Rome ; over
against the New Jerusalem, Babylon the Great ; over
against the bride of the Lamb, the scarlet woman riding
upon the beast. Where God has built up his kingdom, the
devil has always counterfeited it by some travesty of his own.
Jeremiah comforted his heart amid the desolations which
fell thick and heavily on his beloved fatherland, by antici
pating the inevitable doom of the oppressor. And his
words, read amid the exiles of Babylon, as they sat beside
the rivers, and wept, and hanged their harps upon the wil
lows, may have inspired that marvelous outburst of faith
and patriotism and undying hatred —
"O daughter of Babylon, thou art to be destroyed;
Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones
Against the rock."
In the same way, throughout the persecutions of the
empire, when paganism made her awful attempts to stamp

JEREMIAH'S GRANDEST ODE 153
out Christianity ; and afterward amid the horrors of inqui
sition, when the Roman Catholic Church sought to extin
guish the true light of the gospel, which in no age has
been without witnesses, the suffering children of God have
turned to the Book of Revelation to read the doom of that
antichristian power which, under the guise of paganism or
of papalism, always sets itself against God, and is set on
by the undying hatred of the devil. Her fate is described
in words that strongly recall those of Jeremiah. She, too,
had the golden cup, and was drunk with blood, and reigned
over the kings of the earth. She, too, is destroyed by a
combination of those that had owned her sway. A voice
is heard bidding God's people come out from her, lest they
be involved in her overthrow. It is rendered unto her
as she rendered, and double is mingled into her cup. As
Seraiah cast a stone into the Euphrates, so a strong angel
casts a great millstone into the sea, saying, " Thus with a
mighty fall is Babylon, the great city, cast down, and shall
be found no more." And her site becomes the haunt of
demons, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird ; the
voice of harpers and minstrels forever silenced ; the light
of the household lamp forever quenched ; the voice of the
millstone forever still.
Prophetic students have always identified this great per
secuting power with Rome, the city of the seven hills ; and
if this interpretation be correct, without doubt in the mil
lennial age her site will be as desolate as that of Babylon
has been for more than two thousand years. But one is
disposed to enlarge the scope of the prophecy, and to be
lieve that every form of anti-Christian power, whether sys
tems of false philosophy or structures of ancient supersti
tion, or gigantic wrongs like the drink traffic and the opium
trade, shall wither and die before the all-conquering might
of Immanuel, who was manifested to destroy the works of

154 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
the devil. He must reign till all enemies are put beneath
his feet. Then shall be heard in heaven the voice of a
great multitude, as the voice of many waters and as the
voice of mighty thunders, saying, " Halleluiah : for the
Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth."
Let us strengthen our confidence in the certain preva
lence of good over evil, of the Church over the world, and
of Christ over Satan, as we consider the precise fulfillment
of Jeremiah's predictions concerning the fall of Babylon.
" So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord : but let them that
love thee be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might."
III. Our own Babylon. — Each heart has its special
form of sin to which it is liable, and by yielding to which
it has been perpetually overthrown. How bitter have been
your tears and self-reproach ! How you have chafed and
foamed beneath the strong iron bit of your tyrant! How
hopeless your struggles to escape from the tormenting net,
whose meshes refused to break, while every plunge only en
tangled you more tightly in its folds !
But there is a deliverance for you, as for those weak and
misguided but suffering Jews. How exactly your life-his
tory is delineated in theirs ! They were the children of
God ; so are you. They might have lived in an impreg
nable fortress of God's covenant protection ; so might you.
They forfeited this by their disobedience and unbelief ; so
have you. They tried to compensate for the loss of God's
keeping power by heroic resolutions and efforts, and by
alliance with neighboring peoples ; so have you. They
utterly failed, and were crushed as a moth in a child's
hand ; so has it been with you. They almost renounced
hope ; this, too, is your case — you hardly dare hope for
deliverance. But as God saved them by his own right
hand, so will he save you. And as Babylon was so utterly

JEREMIAH'S GRANDEST ODE 155
quelled that it ceased to be an object of alarm, so God is
able so entirely to deliver you that you shall no more fear
or be afraid ; you shall see the bodies of your taskmasters
dead upon the sea-shore.
Accept these rules if you would have this blessed deliver
ance :
( 1 ) Put out of your life all known sin. Are there vows
that ought never to have been made? Recall them ! Are
there wrongs that lie back in the past, which can be
righted ? Right them ! Are there secret habits and prac
tices which eat out your heart? Be willing to be set free,
and deliberately tell God so. So far as you are concerned,
put away the idols that have provoked God to jealousy.
(2) Intrust the keeping of your soul to God. You can
not control it, but he can. He made you, and must be
able to keep you. One of his angels has power enough
to bind the devil ; surely then the Lord of all angels can
deliver you from the accursed demons that make sport of
you. If Christ in his human weakness cleared the Temple,
he must be able to drive the foul things from your heart,
and when once they are out it will be easy for him to keep
them out. In his ascension he was raised above all the
principalities and powers of darkness, and you were raised
with him, too, if you only knew it ; certainly the living
Christ can tread your lion and dragon beneath his feet.
You cannot, but he can. Put the case deliberately, thought
fully, calmly into his hand. Do not say, " I will try," but,
" I will trust." Do not look at your faith, but at him. Do
not cry, " Help me! " for that implies that you are going to
do some and he some, and your part will inevitably vitiate
all ; but cry, " Keep me ! " thus throwing the entire responsi
bility on him.
(3) Reckon that the Almighty Saviour accepts your de
posit at the moment of your making it. As it leaves your

156 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
hand it passes into his. Be sure that he has undertaken it
all for you. Do not try to feel that he has, but reckon that
he has. Do not go over and over the act of committal to
see whether it was rightly done. Make it as well as you
can, or ask him to take what you but ineffectively transfer.
Never doubt that he reads your motive and desire, even
though you fail to do as you would, and that he accepts
the eager willing for the perfect doing. Then steadfastly
resist every suggestion to doubt him. Dare to say a hun
dred times a day, " Jesus is able to keep that which I have
committed to him : I am a worm, weak, witless, worthless ;
but the Son of God has me in his safe-keeping ; he hath
delivered, he doth deliver, and I am persuaded that he will
yet deliver." You may have no glad emotion, no paean of
victory, no share of ecstasy : never mind ; lie still and trust
him. The lion may roar all around, but the weary, tired
sheep will lie within the fold absolutely safe, because the
Shepherd interposes his mighty keeping between it and
every dreaded ill.

XVII.
$ oxo a fteeb gtoob as a fjjillar.
(Jeremiah xxiv., xxxiv., xxxvii.)
"Thou wast alone through thy redemption vigil,
Thy friends had fled ;
The Angel at the garden from thee parted ;
And solitude instead,
More than the scourge or cross, O Tender-hearted!
Under the crown of thorns, bowed down thy head.
"But I, amid the torture and the taunting,
I have had thee!
Thy hand was holding my hand fast and faster,
Thy voice was close to me :
And glorious eyes said, ' Follow me, thy Master,
Smile as I smile thy faithfulness to see.' "
Mrs. Hamilton King.
TO a sensitive nature it is an agony to stand alone. By
a swift and unerring instinct such a soul can detect
what is in men's hearts ; and when it knows intuitively that
the sympathy for which it yearns is dried up like a sum
mer brook ; that interest has changed to indifference, and
warmth of friendship to the coldness of disdain — whether
in society or in the great world of human life — its energy
ebbs, and its native power of influence is frozen at its
spring. To many, the sense of being esteemed and loved
is the very breath of life. They would scorn flattery and
the adulation of wealth or fashion ; they are quite content
to dwell among their own people ; but they are so consti-
i57

I58 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
tuted as to require an atmosphere of sympathy for the full
forthputting of their powers.
Many strong and stalwart souls, cast in an heroic mold,
have no experience of this sensitive and tender disposition.
It is well that they have not. They were born to be the
discoverers, the pioneers, the soldiers of the race ; theirs
the ribs of iron and the nerves of steel ; theirs the courage
which mounts higher on opposition and ill-will. They will
never realize the cost at which those do their work and
bear their testimony who have much of the woman in
their nature, with its faculty of insight, its warmth of emo
tion, its keen sensitiveness to praise or hate, its yearning
for sympathy, the smile of approbation, the kind word of
cheer. Jeremiah was one of the latter class : tender, shrink
ing, sensitive, with a vast capacity for emotion, strong to
hate, and therefore to love, not constituted by nature to
stand alone. But herein let us adore that grace which
stepped into his life and for forty years made him " a de-
fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the
whole land " — against princes, priests, and people. They
indeed fought against him, but could not prevail, because
God was with him. He outlasted all his foes, and main
tained the standard to life's end. And this marvelous
endurance and steadfastness of spirit was nowhere so con
spicuous as during the last months of his nation's independ
ence. We must tell part of this story in this chapter, that
none may miss its helpful inspiration, because, if the pres
ence of God could do so much for him, and for so long, it
is sufficient for the weakest child of his that may read these
words. I. Jeremiah's Attitude toward the King. — We gain
much information concerning the situation at Jerusalem,

HOW A REED STOOD AS A PILLAR 159
during the reign of Zedekiah, from the pages of Ezekiel,
who, though resident in the land of the exile, faithfully re
flected, and in prophetic vision anticipated, what was trans
piring in the beloved city, to which his thoughts were in
cessantly directed. His prophecies are most valuable and
interesting when read in this light.
Zedekiah, as we have seen, on ascending the throne,
bound himself under the most solemn sanctions to be loyal
to the supremacy of Babylon ; and there is no doubt that
at the time he fully intended to be faithful, the more espe
cially as, at Nebuchadnezzar's command, he took the oath
of allegiance in the sacred name of Jehovah. But he was
weak and young, and wholly in the hands of the strong
court party that favored an alliance with Egypt and the
casting off of the Chaldean yoke.
Two years before the catastrophe befell, Ezekiel clearly
foretold what was about to happen. He foresaw the
embassy sent to Pharaoh requesting horses and people,
and asked indignantly, " Shall he prosper ? shall he escape
that doeth such things? or shall he break the covenant, and
be delivered ? " And he followed up his bitter remonstrances
by the awful words, "As I live, saith the Lord God, surely
in the place where the king dwelleth that made him king,
whose oath he despised, and whose covenant he brake, even
with him in the midst of Babylon he shall die. Neither
shall Pharaoh with his mighty army and great company
make for him in the war" (Ezek. xvii. 11-21).
Jeremiah, as we know, earnestly dissuaded both king
and princes from entering into the alliance which was being
advocated between Judah and the neighboring states, and
insisted, in the face of the false prophets, that the residue
of the vessels left by Nebuchadnezzar in the Temple would
certainly be transported, as the rest had been, to Babylon,
if the mad project were persisted in (xxvii.). Notwithstand-

160 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
ing all these remonstrances, however, the confederacy was
formed, and in a fatal moment Zedekiah renounced his
allegiance to the king of Babylon.
Then it befell precisely as Ezekiel had foreseen. Stung
to the quick by the perfidy and ingratitude of the Jews,
who had so persistently and obstinately outraged him,
Nebuchadnezzar gathered a vast army, resolved to make
a public example of them to surrounding peoples by the
swiftness and mercilessness of his vengeance. " A sword,
a sword, it is sharpened, and also furbished : it is sharpened
that it may make a slaughter ; it is furbished that it may
be as lightning. . . . Cry and howl, son of man : for it is
upon my people, it is upon all the princes of Israel. They
are delivered over to the sword with my people : smite
therefore upon thy thigh" (Ezek. xxi. 8-17, r.v.).
The king of Babylon comes to the junction of the ways
— this to Jerusalem, that to Rabbah, the chief city of
Ammon. He consults the usual signs of divination, which
point him to the assault of Jerusalem with battering-rams
and mounts and forts. And as he takes the road to the
devoted city, the voice of Jehovah is heard bidding the
prince of Israel, whose day is come, to remove the miter
and take off the crown, because Jehovah was resolved to
" overturn, overturn, and overturn." And then, as though
to justify the awful sentence, there is given an enumeration
of the crimes which were making the streets of Jerusalem
red with blood and foul with impurity. It is altogether
a terrible description of the state of things in the city dur
ing those last years of Zedekiah's reign. A bitter experi
ence for Jeremiah, whose soul must have been sore vexed
from day to day in seeing and hearing their lawless deeds
(Ezek. xxi. 18-27; xxii. 1-16).
At last, in December, 591 b.c, the siege began. On the
approach of Nebuchadnezzar the confederacy had melted

HOW A REED STOOD AS A PILLAR 161
away, and Jerusalem was left alone, an islet amid the roar
ing waves of Chaldean armies. But the citizens had laid
in a good store of provisions, and were expecting daily the
advance of Pharaoh Hophra, with the cavalry of Egypt,
to raise the siege.
At this juncture Zedekiah sent two well-known men to
Jeremiah to ask whether Jehovah would not interpose for
his people, as he had done in the great days of the past,
as, for instance, when he destroyed the host of Sennacherib
in a single night. It must have been a trying ordeal to the
prophet. One conciliatory word might have averted the
dislike of princes and people, given a bright glint of popu
larity and hero-worship, and obliterated the charges of
mean-spiritedness and lack of patriotism that were freely
leveled at him. Why should he not be the Isaiah of this
new siege ? Why not arouse and encourage his people to
indomitable resistance and heroic faith ? Why not blend
his voice with those of the prophets that foretold a certain
deliverance, and so acquire an influence over them, which
might be used ultimately for their highest good ?
It is not impossible that such considerations passed be
fore his mind. But if so they were immediately dismissed.
" Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say to Zede
kiah : Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel ; Behold, I
will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands,
wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against
the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and 1
will gather them into the midst of this city. And I myself
will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a
strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.
And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and
beast : they shall die of a great pestilence. And afterward,
saith the Lord, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah,
and his servants, and the people, even such as are left in

162 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the
famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon :
. . . and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword ;
he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy."
He followed up these terrible words by saying that the
only way of safety was to go forth to the Chaldeans, who
were now investing the city on every side. All who stopped
in the city would die of sword, pestilence, or famine. They
would be accounted as figs not fit to be eaten and des
tined to be cast away as refuse. But those who went forth
and surrendered themselves to the king of Babylon would
save their lives (xxi. ; xxii. 1-9 ; xxiv.).
Yet once again, when the siege of Jerusalem was in prog
ress, and every day the air was full of the cries of the com
batants, the heavy thud of the battering-rams against the
walls, and the cries of wounded men borne from the ram
parts to the tendance of women, Jeremiah went fearlessly
to Zedekiah with the heavy tidings that nothing could stay
the sack and burning of the city, since God had given it
into the hands of the king of Babylon ; and that he would
surely be taken, and behold him face to face. " He shall
speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to
Babylon " (xxxiv. 1-7).
At the same time, rolling across the desert waste and
reverberating like a funeral knell, came the terrible voice
of Ezekiel : " AVoe to the bloody city ! Heap on the wood ;
make the fire hot ; then set it empty upon the coals thereof,
that the rust of it may be consumed. I the Lord have
spoken it. I will not go back, neither will I repent "
(Ezek. xxiv. 1-14).
II. His Attitude toward the Slave-owning Jews.
— It is not impossible that Jeremiah's vehement words of
reproof aroused the deeply drugged conscience of his peo-

HOW A REED STOOD AS A PILLAR 163
pie, and they resolved, at the suggestion of Zedekiah, to
make some reparation for their sins, and at the same time
strengthen their garrison by setting free their slaves. This
was done at a solemn convocation specially summoned in
the Temple, and the national resolve was ratified before
God with the most sacred rites. A calf was cut in twain,
and the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the
eunuchs and the priests, and all the principal people, passed
between the parts of the calf, as much as to say, " May
God part us in twain, as this beast is, if we turn back from
our vow to emancipate our brethren and sisters, Hebrews
and Hebrewesses, who are enslaved."
Great joy spread through hundreds of hearts — a body of
stalwart defenders was raised for the beleaguered city. Best
of all, the nation had done right in the eyes of the Lord.
Two months or so passed, when, to the unbounded joy of
the citizens, the attacks of Nebuchadnezzar became less
frequent ; the lines of the besieging army thinned ; and
presently the tents were struck, and the whole host moved
off. How immense the relief when the crash of catapult
and ram ceased, and the population pent up so long within
their walls could go freely forth ! This diversion was caused
by the approach of Pharaoh's army. The Jews thought
that they would never see their foes again, and must have
derided Jeremiah mercilessly. They also repealed the edict
of emancipation, and caused the servants and handmaidens
whom they had let go to return to their former condition.
In that tumult of national rejoicing, when the prophet's
words seemed falsified, and when the fear they had inspired
turned to increased hatred against the man who had spoken
them ; when he seemed cast off and disowned by Jehovah
himself, it must have needed uncommon faith and cour
age to raise a bold and uncompromising protest. But he
did not swerve by a hair's-breadth from the path of duty.

1 64 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
The infatuation of his people, their treachery to their
plighted oath, the disappointment and sufferings of the en
slaved, and the honor of Jehovah so ruthlessly contemned
— all compelled him to speak out. " Behold, saith the
Lord, I proclaim liberty to the sword, to the pestilence,
and to the famine. And I will give the men that have
transgressed my covenant into the hand of their enemies:
and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the
heaven, and to the beasts of the earth. And Zedekiah king
of Judah and his princes will I give into the hand of the
king of Babylon's army, which are gone up from you.
Behold, I will command, saith the Lord, and cause them
to return to this city ; and they shall fight against it, and
take it, and burn it with fire : and I will make the cities of
Judah a desolation without inhabitant" (xxxiv.).
It needed no common moral courage and sense of the
presence of God to dare to speak such words, and they
must have brought down on the devoted head of the lonely
prophet storms of abuse. How easy to ridicule him when
it seemed so sure that the false prophets were right and
he wrong ! His opponents would be proportionately in
dignant, as the voice of conscience, not yet quite silenced,
protested that he was speaking the very word of Jehovah.
III. His Attitude during the Interval of Respite.
— The city was delirious with joy. The Chaldeans had
withdrawn, Pharaoh would prove more than a match for
them, they would not return. The thunder-cloud had
broken — there was nothing to fear. But Jeremiah never
changed his note. It seemed like a raven's croak amid
the songs of spring birds. Very depressing! Very unpopu
lar ! Very likely to spread suspicion and panic ! Only too
gladly would he have yielded to the current flowing around
him. But he dared not ; and when the king sent another

HOW A REED STOOD AS A PILLAR 165
deputation to inquire through him of Jehovah he returned
this terrible reply : " Deceive not yourselves, saying, The
Chaldeans shall surely depart from us : for they shall not
depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the
Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but
wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every
man in his tent, and burn this city with fire " (xxxvii. 1-10).
God's prophets had too clear a vision of the issue of the
duel between Chaldea and Egypt to be able to buoy up
their people with hopes of deliverance. Jeremiah had al
ready foreseen that the daughter of Egypt should be put
to shame and delivered into the hand of the people of the
north ; he had even asked that the tidings of invasion might
be published in her principal cities (xlvi. 13-28). Ezekiel
was not less decisive : " Thus saith the Lord God ; I will
strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my
sword in his hand : but I will break the arms of Pharaoh,
and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a
deadly wounded man " (Ezek. xxx.).
Shortly after this the prophet resolved to take the oppor
tunity offered by the withdrawal of the Chaldeans to visit
his inheritance at Anathoth, for the purpose of receiving his
portion there, perhaps of rent or of some division of tithes
among the priestly families, of which he was a member.
As he was passing out through the gate of Benjamin, he
was recognized by a captain, whose family had long been
in antagonism with him ; and he was not slow to turn the
occasion to advantage by repaying a long-standing grudge
(xxxvii. 13). He therefore laid hold on the prophet, say
ing, "Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans." It was an
absurd charge ; for the Chaldeans had raised the siege, and
it was supposed they would not return. The pretext, how
ever, was sufficient to serve Irijah's purpose, and though
it was indignantly repudiated by Jeremiah, he was dragged

1 66 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
with violence into the presence of the princes, who were
as glad to have their intractable foe at their mercy as the
priests to whom Judas offered to betray his Master.
When he had been in a similar plight in the previous
reign, Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, had rescued him, like
another John of Gaunt ; but he was now dead or in exile.
Zedekiah was too weak to interpose to rescue the prophet
from the fury of his lords, even if he were acquainted with
his peril. And so they adjudged him to the bastinado ;
forty stripes save one fell from the scourge on his bare
back ; and he was then thrust into a dark, underground,
unhealthy dungeon, where he remained many days at the
peril of his life.
After a while Zedekiah, perhaps pricked by remorse, or
alarmed at the tidings which came from the frontier, sent
for him, much as Herod was wont to summon John the
Baptist from his dungeon to converse with him in his pal
ace halls above. " Is there any word from the Lord ? " the
king asked, anxiously.
What an opportunity was here for Jeremiah to trim his
speech, to put velvet on his lips, and to mitigate the un
welcome truth ! Thus he might curry the king's favor,
and secure for himself deliverance from his intolerable suf
ferings. But again there was no compromise. "And Jere
miah said, There is. He said also, Thou shalt be delivered
into the hand of the king of Babylon."
He then pleaded with the royal clemency for a mitiga
tion of the severity of his sentence, with such good success
that he was committed, at the king's command, to the
court of the guard, in the immediate vicinity of the palace,
and fed daily with a loaf of bread out of the bakers' street,
until all the bread in the city was spent. In the meanwhile
the army of the Chaldeans, having defeated Pharaoh, re
turned, and again formed their thick-set lines around the

HOW A REED STOOD AS A PILLAR 167
city, like a fence of iron, to be drawn closer and closer
until Jerusalem fell, like a snared bird, into their grasp.
It is impossible to recite or read this story without ad
miration for the man who dared to stand alone with God
against a nation in arms. It makes us think of Ziegenbalg,
the first missionary to the East Indies, standing alone there
against the whole force of the authorities, determined to
crush his mission in the bud ; of Judson, pursuing his work
for the salvation of Burmah amid the treachery and hos
tility of the king ; of Moffat, going alone and unarmed into
the territory of the terrible Africander ; of John Hunt amid
the ferocious cannibals of Fiji ; of John G. Paton, who was
preserved amid fifty attempts to take his life. Surely the
angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear
him, and delivereth them. Our duty is to see to it that we
are on God's plan and doing his work ; to wrap around our
souls the sense of his presence ; to keep our ears open to
the perpetual assurance, " I am with thee to deliver thee."
Then we shall find that by our God we can leap barrier-
walls, pass unscathed through troops of foes, and stand as
pillars in his temple that shall never be removed.

XVIII.
Into tl)e (S&ronnb, to flDie.
(Jeremiah xxxii.)
" All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ;
Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, nor power,
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour ;
The light that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
The music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ;
Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by and by."
Browning.
WHILE shut up in the court of the guard, perhaps
fastened by a chain that restrained his liberty, Jere
miah received a divine intimation that his uncle would
shortly come to him with a request for him to purchase
the family property at Anathoth. This greatly startled him,
because he had so clear a conviction, which he cherished
as divinely given, of the approaching overthrow of the
kingdom, and the consequent desolation of the land. It
had been his one incessant message to his people for nearly
forty years that the land must keep her sabbaths as a judg
ment for the sins of the people ; and now it seemed con
flicting and inconsistent to be told to purchase the field at
Anathoth, as though it were needed for cultivation. The
divine command quite staggered him, and may have made
him for a moment question whether there had not been
1 68

INTO THE GROUND, TO DIE 169
some mistake in the message he had so constantly reiter
ated in the ears of his people.
He gave, however, no outward sign of his perplexities ;
but when his uncle's son entered the courtyard with his
request, the prophet at once assented to the proposal, and
purchased the property for seventeen shekels (about ten
dollars). A similar incident is recorded in Roman history.
When Rome was being besieged by Hannibal, the very
ground on which he was encamped was put up for auction,
and purchased — a proof of the calm confidence that the
Romans possessed of the ultimate issue of the conflict.
In addition to this, Jeremiah took care to have the pur
chase recorded and witnessed with the same elaborate pains
as if he were at once to be entering on occupation. Not
a single form was omitted or slurred over ; and ultimately
the two deeds of contract — the one sealed with the more
private details of price, the other open and bearing the signa
tures of witnesses — were deposited in the charge of Baruch,
with the injunction to put them in an earthen vessel and
preserve them. They were probably not opened again
until the return from the captivity ; but we can well im
agine how strong a rush of emotion and confidence must
have been inspired as the men of that day perused the
documents. But Jeremiah was not a sharer in that glad scene. He
did as God bade him, though the shadow of a great dark
ness lay upon his soul, from which he could only find
relief, as the Lord on the cross, in recourse to the Father.
Indeed, at this point of his life he resembles the hidden
vessel, which contained within it the charter of the nation's
deliverance. He was an earthen vessel indeed, but he con
tained heavenly treasure. He fell into the ground to die,
as the seed does, which holds at its heart a principle of life
that can only express itself through death, and can only

17° JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
bless men when its sowing, amid the depression and decay
of autumn, has been complete.
I. Hours of Midnight Darkness. — It is only in service
that anything reaches its fullest life. A bit of iron is con
demned to solitude and uselessness till it becomes part of a
great machine. A seed of corn, hidden for three thousand
years in a mummy-case, abides alone, and only learns the
motive and glory of existence when, through death, it learns
to weave the chemical juices of the earth, and dews, sun
beams, and air, into the fabric of the golden corn. A man
who lives a self-contained life, of which the gratification of
his own ambition and selfhood is the supreme aim, never
drinks the sweets of existence or attains his full develop
ment. It is only when we live for God, and, in doing so,
for man, that we are able to appropriate the rarest blessed
ness of which our nature is capable, or to unfold into all
the proportions of full growth in Christ. In the deepest
sense, therefore, Jeremiah could never regret that he had
given the strength and measure of his days to the service
of others. If he had not done so, but had shrunk back
from the high calling of his early life, his misery would
have been in proportion to the royal quality of his nature,
and his power to enrich the life of man.
But none can give themselves to the service of others
except at bitter cost of much that this world holds dear.
In the words of Christ, the corn of wheat must fall into
the ground and die if it is to bear much fruit. In the case
of the wheat-corn, death is necessary to break up the case
in which the principle of life lies imprisoned. It has fed
on the choice farina, the fine flour, stored in its sac or shell,
and having consumed it all, it must be let forth ; and there
is no way of emancipation except through the death that
tears down the prison-walls of its cell, and allows it to strike

INTO THE GROUND, TO DIE 171
its radicle downward, and its blade upward to the air. And
in the case of every true life there must be death to the
attractions and indulgences of the self-life, that the soul,
being at leisure from itself, may go forth to seek its sup
plies from God, and to weave them into nourishing food
for the lives of those around. This will explain the priva
tions and sorrows to which Jeremiah was subjected. Death
wrought in him that life might work in Israel, and in all
who should read the book of his prophecy.
He died to the dear ties of human love. "Thou shalt not
take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons nor daughters
in this place," was early said to him. The men of Anathoth,
of the house of his father, conspired against him. The
friends with whom he took sweet counsel, and in whose
company he walked to the house of God, betrayed him.
What he held in his heart belonged to the race, and might
not be poured forth within the narrower circle of the home,
of priestly Temple duty, or of the little village of Anathoth.
He died to the good-will of his fellows. None can be in
different to this. It is easy to do or suffer when the bark
of life is wafted on its way by favoring breezes, or the air
thrills with expressions of love and adulation. Then a man
is nerved to dare to do his best. And a nature as sensitive
as Jeremiah's is peculiarly susceptible to such impressions.
But it was his bitter lot to encounter from the first an in
cessant stream of vituperation and dislike. We have no
record of one voice being raised to thank or encourage him.
" Woe is me, my mother," he cried, sadly, "that thou hast
borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the
whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have
lent to me on usury ; yet every one of them doth curse
me." He died to the pride of national patriotism. No patriot
allows himself to despair of his country. However dark

I72 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND PROPHET
the lowering storm-clouds and strong the adverse current,
he believes that the ship of state will weather the storm.
He chokes back words of despondency and depression lest
they should breed dismay. He does not allow his heart to
harbor the thoughts of despair that flit across it and knock
for entrance ; he drives them away, and treats them as
traitors guilty of high treason. But Jeremiah was driven
along an opposite course. A truer heart than his never
beat in human breast. A loftier patriotism than his never
hazarded itself in the last breach. His belief in Israel was
part of his belief in God. But he found himself compelled
to speak in such a fashion that the princes proposed, not
without show of reason, to put him to death, because he
weakened the hands of the men of war.
He died to the sweets of personal liberty. A large portion
of his ministry was exerted from the precincts of a prison.
Repeatedly we read of his being shut up and not able to
go forth. His friend Baruch had constantly to act as his
intermediary and interpreter. This, too, must have been
bitter to him. His writings abound with references to
nature and to natural processes ; and the iron fetters of
restraint must have eaten deeply into the tender flesh of
his gentle heart.
He died, also, to the meaning he had been wont to place on
his own prophecies. Up to the moment when Jehovah bade
him purchase the property of Hanameel, he had never
questioned the impending fate of Jerusalem. It was cer
tainly and inevitably to be destroyed by sword, famine,
pestilence, and fire. All that he had ever said in private
or public was but the fresh assertion of this bitter fate, with
some new touch of pathos or turn of emphasis. But now
the word of God, demanding an act of obedience, seemed
to indicate that the land was to remain under the cultiva
tion of the families that owned it.

INTO THE GROUND, TO DIE 173
II. Jeremiah's Behavior. — To very few men has it
been given so closely to walk along the path which the
Redeemer trod during his earthly life. He was stripped
of almost everything that men prize most. But amid it all
he derived solace and support in three main directions :
(1) He pi-ay ed. Take this extract from his own diary:
"Now after I had delivered the deed of the purchase unto
Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed unto the Lord, say
ing, Ah, Lord God ! " Yea, and he was encouraged in this
holy exercise, for shortly after this incident, when tidings
came to him that the houses of the kings of Judah were
being broken down to provide materials for the building
of an inner line of defence behind the shell of wall which
was nearly demolished by the terrible battering-rams, and
when his heart was more than ever dismayed, the word of
the Lord came to him, saying, " Call unto me, and I will
answer thee, and will show thee great and secret [or inac
cessible] things, which thou knowest not" (xxxiii. 1-5).
There is no help to the troubled soul like that which
comes through prayer. You may have no clear vision of
God. You may be only able to grope your way in the
direction where he sits enshrouded from your view in the
thick darkness. You may be able to do little more than re
cite things which God and you know perfectly well, ending
your prayer as Jeremiah did, with the words, " and, behold,
thou seest it" (24). Nevertheless pray ; pray on your knees ;
" in everything by prayer and supplication ... let your
requests be made known unto God ; " and the peace of God
will settle down on and enwrap your weary, troubled soul.
(2) He rested on the Word of God. The soul of the proph
et was nourished and fed by the divine Word. " Thy words
were found," he cries, " and I did eat them : and thy words
were unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." It
sounds but hard and cold advice to bid a man in sorrow

174 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
to read his Bible ; but it were impossible to give better.
Because behind the words is the Word ; in this garden the
Son of Man walks ; in this tabernacle the Sun shines in
whose beams are health and comfort. How often have
God's people turned to the Bible, as the Saviour did in
the darkest hours that swept over his soul, and found in a
psalm or a chapter the balm of Gilead, the tree of life with
healing leaves !
(3) He faithfully kept to the path of duty. "And I bought
the field." It does not always happen that our service to
men will be met by rebuff, ill-will, and hard treatment ;
but when it does there should be no swerving or flinching
or drawing back. God's sun shines on the evil as well as
the good, and his rain descends on the fields of the thank
less churl equally as on those of his children. The fierce
snow-laden blast, driving straight in your teeth, is not so
pleasant as the breath of summer, laden with the scent of
the heather ; but if you can see the track you must follow
it. To be anywhere off it, either right or left, would be
dangerous in the extreme. And often when the lonely
soul has reaped nothing but obloquy and opposition, has
been borne to a cross, and crucified as a malefactor, it has
comforted itself with the prospect of the harvests of blessing
which were to accrue to those who had rejected its appeals,
just as Pentecost came to those who had been the murder
ers of Christ.
Such are the resorts of the soul in its seasons of anguish.
It casts itself on the ground, crying, " Father, Abba, Father ; "
it stays itself on the word of promise that comes to it in
angel garb ; it goes forth to yield itself to death, assured
that life awaits it and the objects of its choice.
III. Compensations. — To all valleys there are mount
ains, to all depths heights ; for all midnight hours there are

INTO THE GROUND, TO DIE 175
hours of sunrise ; for Gethsemane an Olivet. We can never
give up aught for God or man without discovering that at
the moment of surrender he begins to repay, as he foretold
to the prophet : " For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I
will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron."
We do not make the surrender with any thought of profit
ing by it ; but when we make it with a single purpose and
aim, we learn that when Christ lays a requisition on boat
or sailor's time, he returns the boat laden with fish to the
water's edge.
Nor does God keep these compensations for that new
world, " where light and darkness fuse." It were long to
wait if that were so. But here and now we learn that there
are compensations. It may seem a hardship to the man
to leave his cell, where he has been immured so long that
he dreads the light, the stare of strange eyes, the call for
exertion ; but when the first stiffness of the joints and the
novelty of his surroundings have passed off, will he not be
compensated ? The first movement from the selfish life may
strain and try us, the indifference of our fellows be hard to
bear ; but God has such things to reveal and give as pass
the wildest imaginings of the self-centered soul.
So Jeremiah found it. His compensations came. God
became his Comforter, and wiped away his tears, and
opened to him the vista of the future, down whose long
aisles he beheld his people planted again in their own land.
He saw men buying fields for money, and subscribing deeds
and sealing them, as he had done ; he heard the voice of
joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom
and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that bring the
sacrifices of joy into the Lord's house ; he was assured of
the advent of the Man, the Branch from the root of David,
who should sit upon his throne (xxxii., xxxiii.). There was
compensation also in the confidence with which Nebuchad-

176 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
nezzar treated him, and in the evident reliance which his
decimated people placed on his intercessions, as we shall
see. And if he could only know of the myriads who had
been comforted by the story of his griefs, and by the assur
ances of his prophecies — ruddy juice pressed into the golden
chalice of Scripture by the sorrows that crushed his heart
— surely he would feel that his affliction was light and not
worthy to be compared with the far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory which it was working out.
So will it be with all who fall into the ground to die.
God will not forget or forsake them. The grave may be
dark and deep, the winter long, the frost keen and pene
trating ; but spring will come, and the stone be rolled away,
and the golden stalk shall wave in the sunshine, bearing its
crown of fruit, and men shall thrive on the bread of our
experience, the product of our tears and sufferings and
prayers.

XIX.
®h,e JToli of Jerusalem.
(Jeremiah xxxviii., xxxix.)
" Among the faithless faithful only he ;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal ;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind
Though single. From amidst them forth he pass'd,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustain'd
Superior, nor of violence fear'd aught ;
And with retorted scorn his back he turn'd
On those proud tow'rs to swift destruction doom'd." Milton.
DURING those long, dark months of siege probably the
only soul in all that crowded city which was in per
fect peace, and free in its unrestrained liberty, was Jere
miah's. Tethered as he was by an iron chain to the wall
of the court of the guard, he passed beyond the narrow
confines of the inclosure to the great age that was to be,
when Judah should be saved and Jerusalem should dwell
safely, known by the name The Lord our Righteous
ness. And amid the cries of assailants and defenders, un
broken by the thud of the battering-rams, deep as the blue
Syrian sky that looked down upon him, was the peace of
God, that passed the understanding of those that thronged
177

178 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
in and out, to and fro, between the city and the royal
palace. I. The Horrors of the Siege. — It lasted in all for
about eighteen months, with the one brief respite caused
by the approach of Pharaoh's army, and it is impossible
for us to estimate the amount of human anguish which
was crowded into that fateful space. Some conception of
it may be gathered from the words with which Ezekiel an
ticipated it. As in a mirror coming events were forecast.
The caldron full of the choicest flesh hanging over the
swift fire until it was consumed ; the vision of the iron pan
encircling the sun-burnt brick, as the iron legions of Chaldea
would engirdle the beleaguered city ; the meager measure of
wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and
spelt, dealt out by measure day by day, but barely sufficient
for the prophet's sustenance ; the barley-cakes mingled with
cow's dung, abhorrent to the taste, yet greedily devoured ;
the stealthy preparation of his household stuff for removal ;
and the stealing out at night from his house by a hole in
the wall, with covered face and laden shoulder — all these
spoke with a vividness which no words could equal of the
horrors of that siege (Ezek. iv.).
Imagine for a moment the overcrowded city, into which
had gathered from all the country round the peasantry and
villagers, who, with such of their valuables as they had
been able hastily to collect and transport, had sought ref
uge within the gray old walls of Zion from the violence
and outrage of the merciless troops. If wandering tribes
like the sons of Rechab were induced for once to break the
tradition of their nomad life to shelter themselves within
the city inclosure, how much more would the terrified
populations scattered in slight habitations over the hill
country count it politic to do the same ? This mass of

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 179
fugitives would greatly add to the difficulties of the defence
by their demands upon the provisions which were laid up
in anticipation of the siege, by overcrowding the thorough
fares and impeding the movements of the soldiery.
The incident referred to in our last chapter, of the demo
lition of a portion of the royal palace to provide materials
for an inner line of defence, is a specimen of many another
episode in that intense effort of Zedekiah and his people
to hurl back the tide of merciless hate and thirst for blood
that broke day after day around the battlements ; much as
the long ocean wave sends its surges up against a reef of
rock, and casts its splintered forces high in air. Here there
was a scaling party which must be flung back on their lad
ders ; there an attempt to run a mine which must be inter
cepted ; and now tidings came that a portion of the wall,
which had been long exposed to the battering-rams, showed
signs of weakness and must be built up from within ; and
yet again precautions must be taken against fire flung in
missiles, or flights of arrows, or stones cast by catapults.
For no single hour could the defenders relax their vigi
lance. A council of princes must have been in perpetual
session, fertile in resource, swift to meet the craft or the
courage of the foe. And all the time the stock of provis
ions was becoming less, and the store of water drying, as
in the case of Malchiah's dungeon, into wet mud.
So much for the earlier months of the siege ; but as the
days passed on darker shadows gathered. It was as though
the very pit of hell added in human passion the last dread
horrors of the scene. The precious sons of Zion, compa
rable to fine gold, lay by scores in the recesses of the houses,
broken like earthen pitchers, the work of the hand of the
potter. The women became cruel, and refused to spare
from their breast for their young the nutriment they needed
for themselves. The tongues of the sucking babes be-

180 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
came so dry and parched that they could no longer cry.
Young children, whose weakness constituted a first claim,
asked for bread, and asked in vain. Highly nurtured
maidens searched over the dung-heaps in hope of finding
something to stay the craving of hunger. The nobles lost
their portly mien, and walked the streets like animated
mummies. The sword of the invader without had fewer
victims than that which hunger wielded within, and, as the
climax of all, pitiful women murdered their own little babes
and soddened them to make a meal. Finally, pestilence
began its ravages, and the foul stench of bodies that men
had no time to bury, and that fell thick and fast each day
in the streets of the city, like autumn leaves, caused death,
which mowed clown those that had escaped the foe and
privation. Ah, Jerusalem ! who stonedst the prophets, and
sheddest the blood of the just, this was the day of the over
flowing wrath and fury of Jehovah ! No human hand lit
the flame, no mere human hate was accountable for suffer
ings so complex and so terrible. "Thou, O God, hast slain
priest and prophet in thy sanctuary ; youth and age in the
streets. Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger ;
thou hast slaughtered, and not pitied."
And as Jeremiah waited day after day, unable to do
other than listen to tidings of woe that converged to him
from every side, he resembled the physician who, unable
to stay the slow progress of some terrible form of paralysis
in one he loves better than life, is compelled to listen to
the tidings of its conquests, knowing surely that these are
only stages in an assault which ultimately must capture the
citadel of life — an assault which he can do nothing to stay.
II. The Prophet's Added Sorrows. — In addition to
the discomfort which he shared in common with the rest
of the crowded populace, Jeremiah was exposed to aggra-

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 181
vated sorrows. It would appear that he was constantly
reiterating in the ears of all who passed through the court
house the message which he had previously delivered to the
king, that to stay in the city was to incur death by sword,
famine, or pestilence, while to go forth to the lines of the
Chaldeans was the one condition of life. He lost no op
portunity of asserting that Jerusalem should surely be given
into the hands of the king of Babylon, and that he would
take it. As these words passed from lip to lip, they carried
dismay throughout the city. Men repeated them as they
did duty on the walls, or met around the bivouac fires, or
discussed the probable issues of the siege ; and the fact
that Jeremiah had so often spoken as the mouthpiece of
Jehovah gave an added weight to his words.
It was quite natural, therefore, that the princes, who
knew well enough the importance of keeping up the cour
age of the people, should demand the death of one who
was not only weakening the hands of the people generally,
but especially of the men of war. In some such way the
drowsy sleeper, unwilling to be aroused by the barking of
the watch-dog, catches up his revolver to shoot him ; or
the crew, eager for carouse, murders the watchman who
warns them of the white surf breaking along a ragged,
rock-bound shore. The young king was weak rather than
wicked, a puppet and toy in the hands of his princes and
court. He therefore yielded to their demand, saying, " Be
hold, he is in your hand : for the king is not he that can
do anything against you."
Without delay Jeremiah was flung into one of those
rock-hewn cisterns that abound in Jerusalem, and the bot
tom of which, the water having been exhausted during the
extremities of the siege, consisted of a deep sediment of
mud, into which he sank. There was not a moment to be
lost. The life of the faithful servant of God was not to

182 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
end amid the damp darkness of that hideous sepulcher,
from which no cry could reach the upper air ; and help
was sent through a very unexpected channel. An Ethi
opian eunuch — who is probably anonymous, since the name
Ebed-melech simply means " the king's servant " — with a
love to God's cause which was sweetly prophetic of the
way in which Gentile hearts would be opened to welcome
and forward it throughout the world, hastened to the king,
then sitting to administer justice at one of the gates of the
city, remonstrated with him, and urged him to take im
mediate steps to save the prophet from imminent death.
Always swayed by the last strong influence brought to
bear on him, the king yielded as easily to his faithful serv
ant, who was probably the custodian of his harem, as he
had done to his lords, and bade him take a sufficient num
ber of men to secure him from interference, and at once
extricate the prophet. There was great gentleness in the
way this noble Ethiopian executed his purpose. He was
not content with merely dragging him from the pit's bot
tom, but lined the ropes with old cast clouts and rotten
rags, fetched hurriedly from the house of the king ; thus
the tender flesh of the prophet was neither cut nor chafed.
It was an act of womanly tenderness, which makes it as
fragrant as the breaking of the box over the person of the
Lord. It is not enough to serve and help those who need
assistance ; we should do it with the sweetness and gentle
ness of Christ. It is not only what we do, but the way in
which we do it which most quickly indicates our real selves.
Many a man might have hurried to the pit's mouth with
ropes ; only one of God's own gentlemen would have
thought of the rags and clouts. It is very quaint and
beautiful, when so much is left untold, that a dozen lines
in the Word of God should be given to this simple inci
dent and the hurried advice thrown into the darkness of

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 183
the lonely prophet by his kind-hearted deliverer. " Then
they drew up Jeremiah with the cords, and took him up
out of the dungeon : and Jeremiah remained in the court
of the guard."
From that moment till the city fell the prophet remained
in safe custody, and on one memorable occasion the king
sought his counsel, though in strict secrecy. Once more,
and for the last time, those two men stood face to face —
king and prophet — weakness and strength — representatives,
the one of the fading glories of David's race, and the other
of the imperishable splendor of truth and righteousness.
Once more Zedekiah asked what the issue would be, and
once more received the alternatives that appeared so fool
ish to the eye of sense — Defeat and Death by remaining
in the city ; Liberty and Life by going forth.
" Go forth ? " said Zedekiah, in effect, "never! It would
be unworthy of one in whose veins flows the blood of kings.
I shall expose myself to the ridicule of all that have fled
across the Chaldean lines, and the Chaldeans themselves
would deliver me into their hands."
" They shall not deliver thee," said Jeremiah, and then
began to plead with him as a man might plead for himself.
" Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord, in that which
I speak unto thee : so it shall be well with thee, and thy
soul shall live." Then in graphic words he painted the pict
ure of the certain doom the king would incur if he tarried
until the city fell into the captor's hands. For the derision
of the few Jews that had fallen away, he would then be
exposed to the taunts of his wives and children, who would
by that time have become allotted to their captors, and
would seek to win the smiles of their new lords by taunt
ing the fallen monarch in whose smiles they had been wont
to bask.
In this advice of Jeremiah we are reminded of words

1 84 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
repeated by our Lord on five different occasions, and in
which he tells us that those who keep their lives lose them,
and that those who lose their lives find and keep them.
Not in husbanding our strength, but in yielding it in serv
ice ; not in burying our talents, but in administering them ;
not in hoarding our seed in the barn, but in scattering it ;
not in following an earthly human policy, but in surrender
ing ourselves to the will of God — do we find the safe and
blessed path. The man of faith judges not after the sight
of his eyes or the judgment of sense; he strikes currents
flowing unseen by the world, and acts on suggestions re
ceived by direct communication from the Spirit of God,
though always through the Word of God, and consistent
with the loftiest dictates of sanctified common sense.
The weakness which was the ruin of Zedekiah came out
in his request that Jeremiah would not inform the princes
of the nature of their communications, and would hide the
truth beneath the semblance of truth. It is difficult to pro
nounce a judgment on the way in which the prophet veiled
the purport of his conversation with Zedekiah from the in
quisitive questions of the princes. There is an appearance
of evasion in his reply, which seems a little inconsistent with
the character of the prophet of Jehovah. At the same time,
the princes had no right to catechize him, and he was not
obliged by his duty to them to tell the entire truth. We
are under no obligation to gratify an impertinent curiosity ;
but we must be very careful to be transparent in speech
and in act, and to be utterly true when we profess to be
telling the whole truth to those that have a right to know.
In the present case the prophet shielded the king with a
touch of chivalrous devotion and loyalty which was prob
ably the last act of devotion to the royal house, to save
which he had poured out his heart's blood in tears and en
treaties and sacrifices for nearly forty years.

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 185
HI. The Fate of the City. — At last a breach was
made in the old fortifications, and the troops began to rush
in, like an angry sea which after long chafing has made
for itself an entrance in the sea-wall, and pours in turbu
lent fury to carry desolation in its course. The kings of
the earth and all the inhabitants of the world could never
.iave believed that the adversary and the enemy should
enter into the gates of Jerusalem ; yet so it befell. Then
the terrified people fled from the lower into the upper city,
and as they did so their homes were filled with the desolat
ing terror of the merciless soldiery.
A hundred different forms of anguish gathered in that
devoted city, like vultures to the dead camel of the desert.
Woe then to the men who had fought for their very life !
but woe more utter and agonizing to the women and maid
ens, to the children and little babes ! War is always ter
rible ; but no hand of historian dare lift the veil, and tell
in unvarnished words all the horror of the sack of a city
by such soldiery as Nebuchadnezzar and his generals led to
war. The wolves of the Siberian forest are more merciful
than they. " All the princes of the king of Babylon came
in, and sat in the middle gate," from which they gave direc
tions for the immediate prosecution of their success upon
the terrified people, who now crowded the upper city, pre
pared to make the last desperate stand.
Late that afternoon the old palace of David was filled
with eager consultation. Everything must be done to pre
serve the royal house, "the breath of our nostrils, the
anointed of the Lord." It was therefore arranged that
as soon as night fell Zedekiah and his harem should go
forth under the protection of all the men of war, through
a breach to be made in the walls of the city to the south ;
and exactly as Ezekiel had foretold, so it came to pass.
" The prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoul-

1 86 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
der in the dark, and shall go forth : they shall dig through
the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face"
(Ezek. xii. 12).
A long line of fugitives, each carrying property or neces
saries, stole silently through the king's private garden, and
so toward the breach, and like shadows of the night passed
forth into the darkness between long lines of armed men,
who held their breath. If only by the dawn they could
gain the plains of Jericho they might hope to elude the
fury of their pursuers. But all night Zedekiah must have
remembered those last words of Jeremiah, " Thou shalt not
escape, but shalt be taken by the hand of the king of Baby
lon." " Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker ! Let
the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth." This
was not the first time or the last that man has thought to
elude the close meshes of the Word of God.
Somehow the tidings of the flight reached the Chaldeans.
The whole army arose to pursue. " Our pursuers were
swifter than the eagles of the heaven : they chased us upon
the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness. . . .
The anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits." That is
the lament of Jeremiah ; but Ezekiel gives an even deeper
insight into the events of that memorable and terrible night :
" My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken
in my snare. . . . And I will scatter toward every wind all
that are about him to help him, and all his bands " (Lam.
iv. 19, 20; Ezek. xii. 13, 14).
What happened the next morning in Jerusalem and what
befell her in after-months is told in the Book of Lamenta
tions. Her streets and houses were filled with the bodies
of the slain, after having been outraged with nameless
atrocities ; but happier these perchance than the thousands
who were led off into exile or sold into slavery, to suffer
the horrors of death in life. Then the wild fury of fire

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM 187
engulfed temple and palace, public building and dwelling-
house, and blackened ruins covered the site of the holy and
beautiful city which had been the joy of the whole earth ;
and the ear of the prophet heard the spirit of the fallen
city crying:
" Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is
done unto me,
Wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger ! "
All that passed by clapped their hands at her ; they hissed
and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, say
ing, " Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth ? " All her enemies opened their
mouths wide against her : they hissed and gnashed their
teeth : they said, " We have swallowed her up : certainly
this is the day that we looked for ; we have found it, we
have seen it." The Lord did that which he devised : he ful
filled his word : he threw down, and did not pity : he caused
the enemy to rejoice. Foxes walked upon the desolate
mountain of Zion (Lam. ii. v.).
As for Zedekiah, he was taken to Riblah, where Nebu
chadnezzar was at this time, perhaps not expecting so
speedy a downfall of the city. With barbarous cruelty he
slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, that the last
sight he beheld might be of their dying agony. He was
also compelled to witness the slaughter of all his nobles.
Then, as a coup de grdce, with his own hand probably,
Nebuchadnezzar struck out Zedekiah's two eyes with his
spear. Thus God brought upon his people the king of the Chal
deans, who slew their young men with the sword in the
house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon
young man or maiden, old man or ancient, but gave them

1 88 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God,
great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord,
and the treasures of the king and his princes, all these he
brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God,
and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all the
palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly ves
sels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword
carried he away to Babylon, and they were servants to him
and his sons.

XX.
& Cloubeb Bmtset.
(Jeremiah xl.-xliv.)
"Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker thou of houses not made with hands!
What! have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There never shall be one lost Good! What was, shall live as before ;
The Evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good, shall be good, with for evil so much good more ;
On the earth the broken arcs — in the heaven a perfect round!"
Browning.
IF the closing verses of the Book of Jeremiah were writ
ten by his own hand, he must have lived for twenty
years after the fall of Jerusalem ; but they partook of the
same infinite sadness as the forty years of his public minis
try. It would appear that so far as his outward lot was con
cerned the prophet Jeremiah spent a life of more unrelieved
sadness than has perhaps fallen to the lot of any other, with
the exception of the Divine Lord. This was so apparent
to the Jewish commentators on the prophecies of Isaiah
that they applied to him the words of the fifty-third chap
ter, which tell the story of the man of sorrows, who was
acquainted with grief, and stood as a sheep dumb before
her shearers. Of course in the light of Calvary we see
the depths of substitutionary suffering in those inimitable
words which no mortal could ever realize ; but it is never-

19° JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
theless significant that in any sense they were deemed ap
plicable to Jeremiah.
His sufferings may be classed under three divisions:
those recited in the Book of Lamentations, and connected
with the fall of Jerusalem ; those connected with the mur
der of Gedaliah and the flight into Egypt ; and those of
the exile there. But amid the salt brine of these bitter ex
periences there was always welling up a spring of hope and
peace. Oppressed on every side, but not straitened ; per
plexed, yet not unto despair ; pursued, yet not forsaken ;
smitten down, yet not destroyed ; always delivered unto
death, yet passing through death into the true life, sure that
the Lord would not cast off forever, but, though he caused
grief, he would have compassion, according to the multitude
of his mercies.
I. The Desolate City. — It is only latterly that any
question has been raised as to the authorship of the Book
of Lamentations. In the text no author is named, and
these exquisite elegiacs have descended to us anonymously.
But a very old tradition ascribes them to our prophet. In
the Septuagint translation, made in the year 280 B.C., the
following introduction is prefixed to the book : " It came
to pass, after Israel was taken captive, and Jerusalem made
desolate, Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented this lamenta
tion over Jerusalem." To this the Vulgate adds, " in bit
terness of heart-sighing and crying." The cave in which
Jeremiah is said to have written them is still shown on the
western side of the city ; and every Friday the Jews assem
ble to recite as his these plaintive words, at their wailing-
place in Jerusalem, where a few of the old stones still remain.
There is no good reason, therefore, for disassociating the
Book of Lamentations from the authorship of Jeremiah.
This being so, what a flood of light is cast upon the

A CLOUDED SUNSET 191
desolate scene when Nebuzar-adan had completed his work
of destruction, and the long lines of captives were already
far on their way to Babylon ! How many went into exile
we have no means of knowing ; the number would probably
amount to several thousands, principally of the wealthier
classes. Only the poor of the people were left to cultivate
the land, that it might not revert to an absolute desert.
But the population would probably be very sparse — a few
peasants scattered over the sites which had teemed with
crowds. The city sat solitary which had been full of people. She
had become as a widow. Night and day it seemed to the
eye of her patriot lovers as though she were weeping sore
and her tears were upon her cheeks ; the holy fire was ex
tinct upon her altars ; pilgrims no longer traversed the ways
of Zion to attend the appointed feasts ; her gates had sunk
into the ground, and her habitations were pitilessly de
stroyed by fire. How often would Jeremiah pass mourn
fully amid the blackened ruins ! Here was the site of the
altar ; there of the most holy place. That was the palace
of David ; this the new palace that Jehoiakim had made
for himself, with its wide windows and heavy coatings of
vermilion. Yonder was the court of the guard, where he
had suffered so many months of confinement ; and there,
again, was the place where he had so often stood to warn
his people of their sins.
Above and around, nature preserved the unbroken round
of her seasons and months, of day and night. The old
mountains which had stood around the city in the days of
David and Hezekiah glowed with the morning light and
softened in the darkening shadows of the night. The sun
arose over Olivet and set in the western sea. The pano
rama of hill and valley, which lay around like the undu
lations of a sea of rock, spread itself in its accustomed

192 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
strength and beauty, for Zion had always been beautiful in
her situation. But upon the site of the virgin daughter of
Zion the stillness of death had fallen, broken only by the
cry of jackal and wild dog.
What all this meant to Jeremiah words fail to say. No
truer heart ever beat in patriot's bosom. What Phocion
felt for Athens, what Savonarola for Florence, what the
elder Pitt for England, amid the catastrophes that darkened
his latter days — that in a concentrated form must Jere
miah, whose love for country was so intimately bound up
with his religious life, have felt and suffered. Anticipating
the words of One who in after-days was to sit on the same
mountain and look across the valley, he might have said,
" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets, and
stoneth them that are sent unto her ! how often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gather
ed! her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! Be
hold, your house is left unto you desolate ! "
II. Gedaliah's Murder. — Nebuchadnezzar and his
chiefs had evidently been kept closely informed of the
state of parties during the siege of Jerusalem, and the king
gave definite instructions to his chief officers to take special
precautions for the safety of Jeremiah. When the upper
city fell into their hands, they sent and took him out of the
court of the guard, and he was brought in chains anion;:
the other captives to Ramah, about five miles north of
Jerusalem. In a remarkable address which the captain of the guard
made to Jeremiah, he acknowledged the retributive justice
of Jehovah — one of the many traces of the real religious
ness that gave a tone and bearing to these men by which
they are altogether removed from the category of ordinary
heathen. "The Lord thy God pronounced this evil upon

A CLOUDED SUNSET 193
this place, and the Lord hath brought it, and done accord
ing as he spake : because ye have sinned against the Lord,
and have not obeyed his voice, therefore this thing is come
upon you."
The chains were then struck from off his fettered hands,
and liberty was given him either to accompany the rest of
the people to Babylon, or to go where he chose through
out the land. Ultimately, as he seemed to hesitate as to
which direction to take, the Chaldean general urged him
to make his home with Gedaliah, to strengthen his hands,
and give him the benefit of his counsel in the difficult task
to which he had been appointed. Thus again he turned
from rest and ease to take the rough path of duty.
Gedaliah was the grandson of Shaphan, King Josiah's
secretary, and son of Ahikam, who had been sent to in
quire of the prophetess Huldah concerning the newly
found Book of the Law. On a former occasion the hand
of Ahikam had rescued Jeremiah from the nobles. Evi
dently the whole family was bound by the strongest, ten
derest ties to the servant of God, imbued with the spirit
and governed by the policy which he enunciated. These
principles Gedaliah had consistently followed, and they
marked him out, in the judgment of Nebuchadnezzar, as
the fittest to be intrusted with the reins of government
and to exert some kind of authority over the scattered rem
nant. To him, therefore, Jeremiah came with an allow
ance of victuals and other marks of the esteem in which
the conquerors regarded him.
For a brief interval all went well. The new governor
took up his residence at Mizpah, an old fort which Asa
had erected three hundred years before to check the inva-
son of Baasha. The town stood on a rocky eminence, but
the castle was supplied with water from a deep well. Chal
dean soldiers gave the show of authority and stability to

194 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
Gedaliah's rule. To Mizpah the scattered remnant of the
Jews began to look with hope. The captains of the forces
which were in the fields, still holding out, as roving bands,
against the conqueror, hastened to swear allegiance to the
representative of the Jewish state ; and the Jews who had
fled to Moab, Edom, and other surrounding peoples re
turned out of all places whither they had been driven, and
they came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah, unto Mizpah.
How glad must Jeremiah have been to see this nucleus
of order spreading its influence through the surrounding
chaos and confusion, and with what eagerness he must have
used all the influence he possessed to aid in the establish
ment of Gedaliah's authority! The fair dream, however,
was rudely dissipated by the treacherous murder of Geda
liah, who seems to have been eminently fitted for his post,
by Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah. In the midst of a feast
given by the unsuspecting governor, he was slain with the
sword, together with all the Jews that were with him and
the Chaldean garrison. On the second day after, the red-
handed murderers, still thirsting for blood, slew seventy
pilgrims who were on their way to weep amid the ruins of
Jerusalem and lay offerings on the site of the ruined altar.
The deep well of the keep was choked with bodies, and
shortly afterward Ishmael carried off the king's daughters
and all the people that had gathered around Gedaliah, and
started with them for the court of Baalis, the king of the
children of Ammon, who was an accomplice in the plot.
It was a bitter disappointment, and to none would the
grief of it have been more poignant than to Jeremiah, who,
in the demolition of this last attempt to effect the peace
able settlement of his country, saw the irreconcilable an
tagonism of his people against the reign of the king of Baby
lon. This he knew must last for at least seventy years.

A CLOUDED SUNSET 195
The people themselves appear to have lost heart ; for
though Johanan and other of the captains of roving bands
pursued Ishmael and delivered from his hand all the cap
tives he had taken, and recovered the women and the chil
dren, yet none of them dared to return to Mizpah ; but,
like shepherdless sheep, harried by hogs, driven, draggled,
panting, and terrified, they resolved to quit their land and
retire southward, with the intention of fleeing into the land
of Egypt, with which during the later days of their national
history they had maintained close relations.
They carried Jeremiah with them. They had confidence
in his prayers and in his veracity, since his predictions had
been verified so often by the event. They knew he stood
high in the favor of the court of Babylon. They believed
that his prayers prevailed with God. And therefore they
regarded him as a shield and defence ; a noble representa
tive of the highest hopes and tradition of their people ; one
in whom the statesman, sage, and prophet mingled in equal
proportion. Halting at the caravansary of Chimham, whose name
recalls David's flight from and return to Jerusalem, the spot
where travelers left the frontiers of Palestine for Egypt, the
people earnestly debated whether they should go forward
or return. They came also to Jeremiah, and asked him to
give himself to prayer, that the Lord his God should show
them the way wherein they should walk, and the thing they
should do. They professed their willingness to be guided
entirely by the voice of God, though in this they were
probably not sincere. They dealt deceitfully against their
own souls by appearing to desire only God's ways, while
in point of fact they were determined to enter into Egypt.
For ten days Jeremiah gave himself to prayer. Then
the word of the Lord came unto him, and he summoned

196 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
the people around him to declare it. Speaking in the name
of the Most High, he said: " If ye will still abide in this
land, then will I build you, and not pull you down ; and I
will plant you, and not pluck you up. ... Be not afraid of
the king of Babylon : . . . for I am with you to save you,
and to deliver you from his hand." If, on the other hand,
they persisted in going into the land of Egypt, in the hope
that they would see no more war, nor hear the sound of
the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread, then they would be
overtaken there by the sword, the famine, and the pesti
lence ; they would be an execration, an astonishment, a
curse, and a reproach, and they should never again see
their native land. As he spoke he seems to have been
sadly aware that during the ten days devoted to interces
sion on their behalf the prepossession in favor of Egypt
had been growing, and that his words would not avail to
stay the strong current which was bearing them thither.
So it befell. When he had made an end of speaking all
the words wherewith the Lord had sent him to them, the
chiefs accused him of speaking falsely, and of misrepresent
ing the divine word. Not willing to accuse him flatly of
treachery, they suggested that Baruch, who was still accom
panying him as his faithful friend, had incited him to urge
the return to Canaan with the view of betraying them into
the hand of the Chaldeans for death or exile. So the ter
rified people pursued their way to Egypt, and settled at
Tahpanhes, which was ten miles across the frontier.
Almost the last ingredient of bitterness in Jeremiah's cup
must have been furnished by this pertinacious obstinacy,
which would not be controlled by his word, which resisted
his entreaties, and suggested that his advice was tinctured
by treachery in their best interests. How terrible that they
should malign and misunderstand the man who had spent
forty years of consistent public ministry in efforts to save

A CLOUDED SUNSET 197
them from the effects of evil counsel, and to recall them to
a simple and absolute faith in the God of their fathers !
III. Egypt. — His life of protest was not yet complete.
No sooner had the people settled in their new home than
he was led to take great stones in his hand and lay them
beneath the mortar in some brickwork which was being
laid down at the entry of Pharaoh's palace in Tahpanhes.
" On these stones," he said, " the king of Babylon shall set
his throne, and spread out his royal pavilion upon them.
He shall smite the land of Egypt, and kindle a fire in the
houses of its gods, and array himself in her spoils as easily
as a shepherd throws his outer garment around his shoul
ders. The obelisks of Heliopolis will be also burned with
fire. To have come here, therefore, is not to escape the
dreaded foe, but to throw yourselves into his arms."
Some years must have followed of which we have no
record, and during which the great king was engaged in
the siege of Tyre, and therefore unable to pursue his plans
against Pharaoh. During this time the Jews scattered over
a wide extent of territory, so that colonies were formed in
Upper as well as Lower Egypt, all of which became deeply
infected with the prevailing idolatries and customs around
them. Notwithstanding all the bitter experiences which
had befallen them in consequence of their idolatries, they
burned incense unto the gods of Egypt, and repeated the
abominations which had brought such disaster and suffer
ing upon their nation.
Taking advantage, therefore, of a great convocation at
some idolatrous festival, Jeremiah warned them of the in
evitable fate which must overtake them in Egypt, as it
had befallen them in Jerusalem. " Behold," said the faith
ful prophet, " God will punish you who dwell in the land
of Egypt, as he punished Jerusalem, by sword, by famine,

198 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
and by pestilence : so that none of the remnant of Judah,
which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there,
shall escape or remain, or return to the land of Judah to
dwell there."
A severe altercation then ensued. The men indignantly
protested that they would still burn incense unto the queen
of heaven, as they had done in the streets of Jerusalem, and
they even ascribed the evils that had befallen them to their
discontinuance of this custom. Jeremiah, on the other
hand, gray with age, his face marred with suffering, an old
man now, did not hesitate to insist, in the name of the God
he served so faithfully, that the sufferings of the people were
due, not to their discontinuance of idolatry, but to their
persistence in its unholy rites. " Because ye have burned
incense and sinned against the Lord, and have not walked
in his law, his statutes, or his testimonies ; therefore is this
evil happened unto you, as it is this day." He went on
to predict the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, which
took place in the year 568 B.C., and which resulted, as
Josephus tells us, in the carrying off to Babylon of the
remnant of Jews who had, against Jeremiah's advice, fled
there for refuge. So it was proved whose word should
stand, God's or theirs.
Through all these dark and painful experiences the soul
of Jeremiah quieted itself as a weaned babe. When he
said his strength was perished, still his expectation was
from the Lord. When his soul remembered its wormwood
and gall, he recalled to mind the covenant, ordered in all
things, and sure ; therefore he had hope. The Lord was
his portion, and he hoped and quietly waited for the salva
tion of God. He knew that God would not cast off for
ever, but though he caused grief, yet he would have com
passion, according to the multitude of his mercies. He knew
that his Redeemer lived, who would arise for his cause,
and render a recompense to his foes. He looked far away

A CLOUDED SUNSET 199
beyond the mist of years, and saw the expiry of the sen
tence of captivity, the return of his people, the rebuilding
of the city, the holy and blessed condition of its inhabitants,
the glorious reign of the Branch, the Scion of David's stock,
the New Covenant before which the old should vanish away.
Probably, therefore, his days were not all dark, but aglow
with the first rays of the Sun of Righteousness, smiting the
Alpine peaks of his holy and loyal spirit. The Comforter
must have come to him. God, who comforteth those that
are cast down, must have spoken words of balm and ten
der peace. Never yet in the history of the world has he
permitted his servants to sink in unrelieved and hopeless
midnight. Unto the upright there always arises light in
the darkness. The gloomiest hours that ever brooded over
the Son of Man broke up with the cry, " Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit."
If these words should be read by some whose life, like
Jeremiah's, has been draped with curtains of somber hue,
shutting out the glad light of day — who have trodden the
path of sorrow and the valley of shadow — let them know
that nothing brings men into such intimate relationship
with the spirit of God, and that to none does the Infinite
One stoop so closely as to those that are sore broken on
the wheel of affliction. It is only when we fall into the
ground and die that we cease to abide alone and begin to
bear much fruit. Do not try to feel resigned. Will resig
nation. Submit yourself under the mighty hand of God.
If you can say nothing else, fill your nights and days with
the cry or sob of " Father, not my will, but thine, be done."
Never doubt the love of God. Never suppose for a moment
that he has forgotten or forsaken. Never yield to the sug
gestion of the adversary that the harvests which you are
to garner could have been procured at any less cost. As for
God, his way is perfect, and he makes our way perfect.
Scripture says nothing about the death of Jeremiah.

200 JEREMIAH, TRIEST AND TROPHET
Whether it took place, as Christian tradition affirms, by
stoning in Egypt, or whether he breathed out his soul be
neath the faithful tendance of Baruch, in some quiet cham
ber of death, we cannot tell. The Bible makes compara
tively little of death-scenes, that it may throw into greater
prominence the prolonged narrative of the One Death,
which has abolished death. God's chief interest is focused
on the life and work of his servants. What they did, said,
and suffered is more to him than how they surrendered
their lives at his bidding. Indeed, to know how a man
has lived is to make us largely indifferent of information
regarding his last hours. The sculptured column projects
its shaft in perfect symmetry upward from the earth,
though we may not be able to follow it because the mass
of waving verdure veils it from our gaze. But we know
it is beautiful, and in perfect harmony with all we behold.
But how gladly did the prophet close his eyes upon the
wreck that sin had wrought on the chosen people, and open
them on the land where neither sin, nor death, nor the sight
and sound of war break the perfect rest ! What a look of
surprise and rapture must have settled upon the worn face,
the expression of the last glad vision of the soul as it passed
out from the body of corruption, worn and weary with the
long conflict, to hear the " Well done " and welcome of
God ! His memory was cherished with exceptional rever
ence. It seemed to the restored people as if his tender
spirit were watching over their interests. The struggles of
Judas Maccabaeus were cheered by the thought that he
had come to succor him. It was believed that he con
tinued in heaven the intercessions for which he had been
so famous on earth, and in the days that preceded the
second siege of Jerusalem it was supposed that he had re
appeared in the person of the Son of Man.

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reduced from Scripture Cartoons, by W. J. Morgan and W. S.
Stacey, illustrative of the New Testament. Appropriate
Texts  :. .... 1.20
Silent Comforter. Compiled by Rev. T. B. Harpur  '.80
Gresn Pastures. Compiled by Rev. T. B. Harpur  80

This preservation copy
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The paper used meets the requirements
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P A
2007

3 9002 08072 82

SStfaeSsaE

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