changed."
147
148 THE DISCIPLINE OF CHANGE
T[ Jeremiah applies to nations the dictum of Polonius —
Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,
and apparently suggests that ruin and captivity were necessary elements in the national discipline of Moab —
" Moab hath been undisturbed from his youth ; He hath settled on his lees; He hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel; He hath not gone into captivity : Therefore his taste remaineth in him, His scent is not changed. Wherefore, behold, the days come — it is the utterance of
Jehovah — That I will send men unto him that shall tilt him up; They shall empty his vessels and break his bottles."
As the chapter, in its present form, concludes with a note —
" I will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days — it is the utterance of Jehovah" —
we gather that even this rough handling was disciplinary ; at any- rate, the former lack of such vicissitudes had been to the serious detriment of Moab. It is strange that Jeremiah did not apply this principle to Judah. For, indeed, the religion of Israel and of mankind owes an incalculable debt to the captivity of Judah, a debt which later writers are not slow to recognize. " Behold," says the prophet of the Exile —
" I have refined thee, but not as silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." *
I.
Life's Changes.
The text depicts in vivid imagery an undisturbed and easy life, with the natural penalty that overtakes it.
1. The kingdom of Moab had long enjoyed tranquillity, though there were troublesome neighbours near, and though it was a
1 W. H. Bennett
JEREMIAH xlviii. u 149
state of no great power; it had pleased God to order it so. Moab had " been at ease from his youth." Moab had not been subjected to captivity or to other changes and troubles which are to a nation what pouring from one vessel to another is to wine. He had not been tried with processes which might indeed have been painful, but in which he would have got rid of a good deal of the evil that was in him at the first. Moab had been secure in prosperity ; and so he had remained the same as at the beginning — all his bad qualities being only confirmed by time and use. If Jeremiah had put into modern phrase his indictment of Moab, he would not have said the Moabite was devoid of the military spirit ; he would have judged him void of the civic spirit, which is just the religious spirit in activity. He would have called him low- spirited because he was not high-minded. He would have arraigned him at the bar of Time because he gave to the senses what he would not give to the soul. He would have called on us to behold the doom of self-indulgence and the culpable fate of luxury and ease.
Tf Luxury was one of Bishop Fraser's deepest aversions. He saw clearly the demoralization caused by luxury, and, both in word and act, he set his face steadfastly against luxury in every form. He delighted in bounty, in refinement, in elegance, but he simply hated all vulgarity of display. His estimation of things was fixed not by their market-value, but by their intrinsic worth. He preferred to take a dish of tea with a poor curate who was unselfishly struggling amid poverty to elevate his flock, than to dine off gold plate with a self-indulgent, extravagant million- aire. Upon one occasion he said :
" I never visit the Peel Park at Manchester without thinking what an amount of wisdom there is in the few words inscribed on the statue of Mr. Joseph Brotherton, who had been member for Salford — ' My wealth consisted not in the largeness of my means, but in the fewness of my wants.' I am quite certain there is no system of life more likely to lead to disappointment than to surround ourselves with things which, to begin with, are luxuries, but soon get to be necessities. Many of us have been so long in the habit of surrounding ourselves with luxuries that if we were deprived of them we should think we were actually suffering a wrong, although perhaps twenty years ago they were luxuries beyond our reach, even in our wildest dreams." x
1 J. W. Diggle, The Lancashire Life of Bishop Fraser, 17.
i50 THE DISCIPLINE OF CHANGE
2. The life of Israel was a singular contrast to that of Moab. The Hebrews had never been allowed to remain long undisturbed. Their very exodus from Egypt only resulted at first in their wanderings through the wilderness; and even after they had received possession of the Land of Promise they had no immunity from unsettlement. Indeed their entire national history is almost a perpetual alternation between prosperity and disturbance. At one time they groaned under the yoke of some oppressor ; at another they rejoiced in the deliverance which, by the instru- mentality of some " mighty man of valour," the Lord had wrought for them. Under one king they delighted in the blessings of peace; under another they endured all the agonies of war. In one age they passed through the crisis of a revolution which rent the kingdom in twain ; in another they were subjected to all the discomfort and humiliation of exile. Thus they were " emptied from vessel to vessel," and so we account for the fact that, in the main, they grew in all the qualities which give great- ness to nations, and were at last completely purified from the " lees " of that idolatry which had so long tainted them in the sight of God.