allowance for the effects of changed circumstances. There are times when ancient truths become modern falsehoods, when the signs of God's dispensations are made so clear by the course of natural events as to supersede the revelations even of the most sacred past. Jeremiah saw his country, not as he wished and hoped it to be, but as it really was: he was prepared not merely to admit as an inscrutable fate, but to proclaim as his heaven-sent message, that Jerusalem was doomed. He was to acknowledge that the Temple, with all its hallowed associations, was of no avail; that the newly discovered Law had come too late. In the Reformation of Josiah, which fills so large a space in the historical narrative, he took no part, as though feeling it to be merely a superficial cure that had not probed the deeper moral evil within, which he never ceases to denounce and lay bare. He was to look the shortcomings of his country and his church full in the face, and not shrink from accepting their extremest consequences. When the northern kingdom fell, Hosea's hope could still be sustained by the reflection that Judah was safe. When Amos and Isaiah attacked the Priesthood of Judah, they still felt that there remained the Prophets on whom the nation could fall back. But when Jeremiah mourned for Israel, he felt that there was no reserve in Judah. And when the Priesthood closed in hostile array around him, he felt that, as far as Jerusalem was concerned, the Prophets were no supporters. He was himself the last of those gifted seers, who combined their Prophetic teaching with the active public life of statesmen and counsellors of the nation. Against this fate, against the whole land, against the 'Kings of Judah, against the Princes, against the Priests,' against the Prophets, against the people of the land,' he was to gird up his loins, and arise and 2 speak;' he was to be the solitary fortress, the column of iron, the wall of brass, Jer. xxiii. 9-40; v. 31. 2 Ibid. i. 17, 18, xiii. 13. His cha racter. fearless, undismayed, unconfounded the one grand, immovable figure, which alone redeems the miserable downfall of his country from triviality and shame for forty years, day by day, at early morning, standing to deliver his mournful warnings, his searching rebukes, in the royal chamber or in the Temple court. He was the Prophet of unwelcome, unpalatable Truth, from whose clear vision all illusions had vanished away; in whom the high poetic aspirations of former times were transformed into the hard prose of common life; yet a prose which itself becomes more poetical than poetry, because of its own exceeding tragical simplicity. But here another element enters into his history, which gives a yet deeper tone to its melancholy interest. For this desperate and solitary career we see no longer the wild romantic energy of an Elijah, nor the royal air and majesty of an Isaiah. Of all the Prophets, Jeremiah is the most retiring, the most plaintive, the most closely compassed with ordinary human weaknesses. The cry which he uttered as the dark truth first broke upon his young mind was characteristic of his whole career: 'Ah Lord! I cannot speak; I 'am but a child.'3 It is this childlike tenderness which adds force to the severity of his denunciations, to the bitterness of his grief. His was not one of those stern characters which bear without repining the necessary evils of life. He who was to be hard as brass and strong as iron, who had to look with unmoved countenance on the downward descent of his country, yet longed that his head were waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he might weep day and night for the daughter of his people.' He whose task it was to run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, like the Grecian sage," to see if he could find a single honest Jer. xxv. 3. Compare xxxv. 15. $ Jer. i. 6. Ibid. ix. 1. Comp. Umbreit on Jeremiah, p. xi. 5 Ibid. v. 1, 2. man,—to live, as it were, in the market-place as a butt of scorn,' alike from the religious and irreligious world-he was, by his own nature and inclination, the Prophet of the desert, longing for a 'lodge 2 in some vast wilderness,' that he might leave his people, and avoid the sight of their crimes. His constant imagery is taken from those lonely regions 3 where he would fain be- their bare hills, swept by the dry 8 5 wind, where there was no human being, nor bird of the heavens to be seen;' where wolf, and lion, and panther prowled ; where 7 the untameable wild asses galloped up to the highest peaks, and snuffed up the sultry air; where the heath grows on the parched places, in a salt land, and not inhabited. He stood apart from the almost invariable usage of the Jewish Priesthood by remaining in a life of celibacy, joining neither in the common assemblages of mourning nor of 9 feasting. The austere habits of the Arabian Rechabites, even in the crowded streets of Jerusalem, attracted his 10 admiration, and drew down his emphatic benediction. It was good for him to bear the yoke even from his youth. He 'sits alone, and keeps silence, crouching under his burden.'"1 'He was led not into light, but into darkness,' as in the sepulchral chambers of the dead. His griefs pierced like a flight of arrows 12 into his soul. Through the chambers of his innermost heart there 13 is a shudder. He was over 1 Lam. iii. 14, 62, 63. 2 Jer. ix. 2. Much of this imagery might be suggested by his journey to Babylon (xiii. 1-8), if the burial of his girdle by the Euphrates is to be construed literally, and if 'Euphrates' be the right reading. But both these points are doubtful. The mention of the cliff' (Jer. xiii. 4.) rather leans to some spot in Palestine. Jer. iv. 11, xii. 12 (Heb.). Ibid. v. 6, xii. 8. Ibid. ii. 24, xiv. 6. It is a cha 'racteristic of the wild ass to seek the highest summits of the mountains, ' and there to stand cutting the blue sky with its head and ears erect. 'Their extraordinary strength and agility impels them to do such feats. They are swifter of foot and wilder than any beast that ranges the up'lands.' (Morier.) 9 Jer. xvii. 6, xlviii. 6. Ibid. xvi. 2, 5, 8. whelmed with despair at the thought that he, the gentle, the unselfish, should have been a man of war and a man of contention to the whole country; that he who had never joined the assembly of the mockers, but found his delight in God's moral law, should be tormented by this perpetual pain, this incurable wound that refuses to be healed. 6 'The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.' Such is the burden of his fainting heart. He doubts as to the truth of God: 'Oh Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and "I was deceived.' 'Oh Lord Jehovah, Thou hast greatly deceived this people.' 2 He heaps curses on the day of his birth, curses on the innocent messenger who brought the news of his birth: Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be con'sumed with shame.' He loses all confidence in himself. He feels that the way of man is not in himself; that it is 'not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' 'O Lord, 'correct me but with judgment-not in thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing.' At times he is stung beyond endurance into imprecations, as fierce and bitter on his country and on his opponents, as ever came from the lips of Deborah or David. At times he condescends to the meaner 5 arts of secresy and falsehood. The shortcomings of the Prophets amongst whom he lived were shared by himself. Not even of Elijah can it be said more truly, that he was of like passions with ourselves.' It is this deep despondency and misery of Jeremiah that have caused his name to pass into a proverb for unavailing sorrow. But there is a redeeming element in his Prophecies 1 Jer. xv. 10. 2 Ibid. iv. 10. Ibid. xx. 7, 14-18. + Jer. x. 23, 24. 5 Ibid. xviii. 21, xi. 20-23. tual teach which rescues them from the reproach with which this common phrase would identify them. There is a brighter aspect His spiriof his mission, which makes itself felt, at times even against ing. his own will, or at least without his own consciousness. He was 'set over the nations and the kingdoms,' not only to 'root out, pull down, destroy and throw down,' but also 'to 'build and to 1 plant.' In a higher than in any merely temporal sense, the constructive part of his theology rose immediately from its destructive elements. He was, as we have seen, the last of the Prophet statesmen; he was projected upon the world out of the failure of the Prophetic system. • His heart within him was broken because of the Prophets.' 'The Lord was against the Prophets.' But this brought out more forcibly than ever the essence of the Prophetic spirit in the ruin of its external framework. He had no outward signs to which to appeal. Even his style never rises to the finish or the magnificence of Isaiah or of Nahum. But this compels him to appeal almost entirely to the moral and spiritual force of his Prophetic messages, and these Prophetic messages he places on their highest ground. First of the Prophets, he proclaims distinctly what had been more or less implied throughout, that predictions were subject to no overruling necessity, but depended entirely on the moral state of those to whom they were addressed; that the most confident assurance of blessing could be frustrated by sin; that the most awful warnings of calamity could be averted by repentance. He showed that the most sacred words of prophecy might, by constant repetition, lose their meaning that even the very name of the burden of the Lord,' which had summed up the burning thoughts of Amos and Isaiah, was to be discontinued altogether. He showed to the Priests who trusted in the Temple, that the |