JEREMIAH xii. 5 55
being wise, you have, of course, reckoned for the time when the golden bowl is broken, when no more life is to be drawn from the blood ? " Yes, I have insured my life ; they will be all right." They ! — yes, but you ?
TJ The river " Jordan " had no bridges, and, as far as we read, very few boats. It was never crossed by those means of man's invention — save only that ferryboat which once went to carry over king David's household. From this we may well take this simple lesson — that God may use, and does sometimes use, human art to bring His children safe through their troubles ; but more often, He takes it into His own hand, and so lays the matter out as to give all the glory only to Himself. We are very fond to build our bridges, by which we are to walk over the waters ; but we shall find at last that we were oftener carried through them.1
Tj It is written by one who knew the swellings of Jordan, that to the faithful the stream was shallow, whilst to the doubters it was deep; that the depth of the stream varied with him who crossed ; as faith failed, the waters grew higher. Bunyan knew the stream, and in his book is written the true story of the swelling of Jordan : the trustful goes over almost dry-shod, but over him who is faint and faithless the waters gather.2
1 J. Vaughan.
a G. Dawson, Sermons on Daily Life and Duty, 325.
Habit.
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Literature.
Armstrong (W.), Five-Minute Sermons, 50.
Banks (L. A.), The Sinner and his Friends, 240.
Cooper (A. A.), God's Forget-me-not, 47.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Miscellaneous, 374.
Lennard (V. R.), Our Ideals, 100.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Isaiah and Jeremiah, 274.
Macmillan (H.), The Gate Beautiful, 103.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xliii. (1897), No. 2536.
Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, i. 219.
Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 215.
Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 198 (J. Stalker) ; lii. 205 (A. Brooke) ; lxix
88 (L. T. Dodd). Church of England Magazine, 1. 273 (R. Burgess). National Preacher, xi. 147 (G. Spring). Preacher's Magazine, xiv. 134 (C. J. Vaughan). Treasury (New York), xxi. 616 (R. C. Hall). Twentieth Century Pastor, xxxiv. 172 (W. Downey).
Habit.
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. — Jer. xiii. 23.
The people of Jerusalem were occasionally accustomed to see the dark-skinned Ethiopian, whether we suppose that these were true negroes from Southern Egypt or dark Arabs, and now and then leopards came up from the thickets on the Jordan, or from the hills of the southern wilderness about the Dead Sea. The black hue of the man and the dark spots that starred the skin of the fierce beast are fitting emblems of the evil that dyes and speckles the soul. Whether it wraps the whole character in black, or whether it only spots it here and there with tawny yellow, it is ineradicable ; and a man can no more change his character once formed than a negro can cast his skin, or a leopard whiten out the spots on his hide.
When the words of the text were spoken, Coniah was still king over Jerusalem, and it was a kind of last appeal, sorrowful, plain- tive, almost hopeless ; for the people had so long turned away from God, had indeed sinned so deeply and for so many years, that sin appeared to be ingrained in them, and no more to be eradicated than the blackness of an African skin or the spots on a leopard's hide. Jeremiah, indeed, well knew in his heart that Judah would not return to Jehovah, and so with pathetic bitterness he exclaimed : " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? "
Tj The spots of the leopard, though they have been acquired by imitation of its surroundings, have through long ages been so ingrained and fixed that they cannot be changed. The creature itself cannot alter or remove them by any effort ; they are part of its very nature ; and the pattern of its skin lasts throughout the whole life of the animal, and is communicated from parent to offspring. And so every sinner knows how very hard it is to change evil habits, to efface the stains of sin that have become dyed in the flesh. It is fatally easy to acquire what it is fatally
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60 HABIT
hard to get rid of. You get so accustomed to your sin that you never feel how sinful it is. You are so like your surroundings that you have no sense of contrast or shame. You are content with yourselves, and make no effort to become better. And even when your conscience is aroused and you see the evil and the misery of your sin, the effort to root it out is painful in the extreme.1
Here is a text on Habit. Let us consider — I. The Acquisition of Habit. II. The Power of Habit.
III. The Hallowing of Habit.
IV. The Change of Habit.
The Acquisition of Habit.