The fierce confederate storm Of sorrow, barricaded evermore Within the walls of cities.
Tf There is a little children's hymn which goes like this —
Had I the wings of a dove I would fly, Far, far away, far away.
If that is the use to which we would put our wings, it is an infinite mercy that they have never grown. We are here as stewards, and a steward must be faithful. We are called to be soldiers, not to be deserters. We are set here by an ordering God not to fly away, but to hold on and fight on and trust on to the end.1
2. What was it that moored and anchored Jeremiah to his hard life in Jerusalem ? Why could he not tear himself away
1 G. H. Morrison, The Unlicjhted Lustre, 111.
36 THE CALL OF LIFE
from it ? The whole secret is out when you emphasize these words " that I might leave my people ! " There rested on his spirit a sense of his oneness with his people far more stringent than ever prophet had felt before, a sympathy with their sufferings which breaks forth in some of the most pathetic cries in all literature, a consciousness of their sins which makes him feel their guilt to the depths of his being.
God had not sent him to earth to be as separate from the life of man as a musing man is from the river flowing past his feet. God had sent him, not to watch life from a balcony, but leaping down to share it : not to live in an inn, where a man is not even responsible for the housekeeping, but has only his way to pay. God had begotten Jeremiah into a nation. He had made him a citizen. He had given him a patriot's lot, with the patriot's con- science and heart. Jeremiah had been forced to grow familiar with men, to find them out by living on their own level, to see habit slowly grow and falsehood surely betray itself, and fathers' evil descend to children, and policies reap their fruits, and systems get tried by events, and, moreover, death come down. This was his destiny through all the mingled sin and pity of the linked genera- tions— to feel at once his judgment upon men grow keener and more hopeless and his love for them deeper and more yearning.
Under the power of such a union Jeremiah lived all his days. He acknowledged it ; he sought more and more to feel the force of it. He was an Israelite indeed. Israel in him struggled against its doom. The dumb, inarticulate mind of the people found a voice in him. He wept over them ; he palliated their offences ; he confessed for them their sins. He overflowed with human sympathies ; he had a very rich and tender heart, and with all the wealth of love with which it was dowered he loved the people. These dull, impenitent people felt nothing ; their sins, which drew hot, scalding tears from Jeremiah, did not cost them a thought ; but the spiritual distress, the keener conscience, the agony of estrangement from God, the knowledge of His judgment upon sin — all this was in Jeremiah heavy as lead, and he bore it for the people.
Tf Sir Leslie Stephen contributes some interesting recollec- tions as well as a sympathetic appreciation of his friend Lowell, whom he knew intimately for many years. " Lowell's patriotism,"
JEREMIAH ix. 2 7,7
he writes, " was not the belief that the country which had pro- duced him must be the first in the world ; or that the opinions which he happened to have imbibed in his childhood must be obviously true to every one but fools ; or a simple disposition to brag, engendered out of sheer personal vanity by a thirst for popularity. It was clearly the passion which is developed in a pure and noble nature with strong domestic affections; which loves all that is best in the little circle of home and early surround- ings; which recognizes spontaneously in later years the higher elements of the national life ; and which, if it lead to some erroneous beliefs, never learns to overlook or to estimate too lightly the weaker and baser tendencies of a people. Most faiths, I fear, are favour- able to some illusions, and I will not suggest that Lowell had none about his countrymen. But such illusions are at worst the infirmity of a noble mind, and Lowell's ardent belief in his nation was, to an outsider, a revelation of greatness both in the object of his affections and in the man who could feel them." 1
T[ It has been said that the Bible, especially the New Testa- ment, does not recognize patriotism. M. Eenan says that Christianity kills patriotism. " Religion," he says, " is the organiza- tion of self-devotement and renunciation — the State-patriotism is the organization of egoism."
One answer to this is by reference to facts. Have the most religious nations and times been the most unpatriotic ? Or the most religious men ? On the contrary, the grandest national movements have had the inspiration of religion. The Common- wealth and Puritans in England, the Covenanters in Scotland, Cromwell, Milton, Rutherfurd, James Guthrie, had an intense national feeling. The Cavaliers, with Church and King, associated the two. Abraham Lincoln was a religious man, and there was a deep feeling of religion in Stonewall Jackson. How it ranged them on opposite sides is another question ; but that the senti- ments can unite, and generally have done so, is written in all history.