JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET

[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
V.  AT THE TEMPLE GATES
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

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 (Jeremiah 8:12). The shamefulness of their sin was apparent in their shamelessness. They oppressed the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. Theft, murder, and adultery showed themselves in open day. So frequent and atrocious were their crimes of violence, that they seemed transformed into a horde of robbers -- the 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 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 objection to a religion which consists in postures and ceremonies 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 ebbing 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.
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
V.  AT THE TEMPLE GATES
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

III. THE EXCUSES BENEATH WHICH THE SOUL OF MAN SHELTERS ITSELF.

(1) Ritualism.

It was the old belief that God was bound to help a nation or person that steadfastly complied with the outward forms of religion, as if he had no other alternative than to help his devoted worshiper. In one form or another this conception has appeared 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 transgression, 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, 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 6:8 ). "To what purpose is the multitude 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 sacerdotal distinctions which Moses bade you observe; relinquish all ritual; end festival and fast alike." These things are comparatively indifferent to God, when substituted for obedience and a holy walk (Jeremiah 7:22).
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
V.  AT THE TEMPLE GATES
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

Where the heart is right with God it will find fit and proper expression in the well-ordered worship of the sanctuary. It will find the outward ordinance a means of quickening the soul by the laws of association and expression; but the outward can never be a substitute for the inward. 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 worship 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" (Jeremiah 7:10). 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 held her in their grip! And there are some religious fatalists who have gone so far as to trace their sins to the elective 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 castaway. I may do as I will, he will deliver." Ah, soul, beware! 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 (Jeremiah 7:14) and to Jerusalem. How bare the site; how woeful 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.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(Jeremiah 11:5)

"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 Jeremiah 11:5 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 contain. 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!"
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[nChrist]

JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

There is something very sublime in this attitude. Jeremiah, 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 predicts 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 redeemed Church. When God has judged her that did corrupt the world with her fornication, and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand, as the smoke of her destruction 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; Hallelujah!"

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 acquiesce 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 mysteries 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."

"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" (Matthew 11:26; 2 Corinthians 1:20, R.V.).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

I. THE SOUL'S AFFIRMATION.

(1)In Providence.

We often seem to be traveling through a difficult piece of mountainous country in company with a strong, wise, and gentle companion, who has undertaken to guide us to our destination. 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.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

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 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 impiety, 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 himself. 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, O 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.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(2) In Revelation.

There are mysteries which baffle the 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 apprehension 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 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 ignorant why God chose us; how Christ could combine in himself 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 student 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!"
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(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 devouring 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 suffering 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 happiness 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 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 14:22-23, 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 comforted 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 ungodly. 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 comforted 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 destruction of the wicked.
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

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 as soul is wedded to soul by the strongest and most tenacious 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, decisions I can never reaffirm, sentences I can never countersign, 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 sanctuary of God, which is the focus and metropolis to which the loftiest intelligences converge, in order to come in contact 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!"
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

When face to face with the mysteries of the Atonement, of Substitution and Sacrifice, of Predestination and Election, of the unequal distribution of gospel light, be sure to turn to God as the Father of light, in whom is no darkness, no shadow of unkindness, no note inconsistent with 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 seclusion 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 perplexing 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" (Matthew 11:26).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VI.  THE SOUL'S "AMEN"
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

III. THE TRIUMPH OF THE AFFIRMING SOUL.

"Amen; Hallelujah!" Jesus as he rested in his Father was able to 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; Hallelujah!"

Mark the addition of "Hallelujah" to the "Amen." Here the Amen, and not often the Hallelujah; there the two -- the assent and the consent; the acquiescence and the acclaim; the submission to the will of God, and the triumphant 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 misapprehension 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" (Revelation 15:3, R.V.).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VII.  THE SWELLING OF JORDAN
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

(Jeremiah 11:5)

"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 try 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 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 Jerusalem 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 evening 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 Chronicles 35:20-27; Zechariah 12:11).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VII.  THE SWELLING OF JORDAN
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

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 instituted 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 Chronicles 36:1-8 ).

At the death of Josiah the large party that favored idolatry 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, 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 Jerusalem, and had probably started on a prolonged tour throughout the land, standing up in the principal marketplaces, and announcing everywhere the inevitable retribution that must follow on the breach of the divine covenant (Jeremiah 11:8 ). The issue of that tour was profoundly disappointing. 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 (Jeremiah 11:14; 1 John 5:16).
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JEREMIAH PRIEST AND PROPHET
VII.  THE SWELLING OF JORDAN
BY F. B. MEYER, B.A.

Disappointed and heart-sick, Jeremiah retired to his native place Anathoth. He was unsuspicious of danger, as a gentle 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 clown 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 vehement denunciations of their young relative, and could bear 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 illumination: "The Lord hath given me knowledge of it, and I know it: then thou showedst me their doings" (Jeremiah 11:18 ).

Stunned with the sudden discovery, 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. "Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee: yet would! reason the cause with thee: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they at ease that deal very treacherously?" (Jeremiah 11:20; Jeremiah 12:1, R.V.).
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I. THE APPEAL OF THE MALIGNED AND PERSECUTED SOUL.

(1) He Was Conscious of His own integrity.

Without doubt Jeremiah was profoundly conscious of his unworthiness. 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 respect 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 woeful day, nor taken pleasure in the disasters he announced, nor spoken in the heat of personal passion. The sins of the people had procured the evils he predicted, and he had only sought to warn the reckless mariners of the rocks that lay straight in their course.
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