Ver. 9 (last clause),-" No vision." I. THE TEACHING Al!ID VISION OF PROPHETIC TRUTH OONSTITUTE AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. The writer laments the loss of teaching and vision as abnormal and disastrous. The vision of the prophets was not simply nor chiefly concerned with the distant future and recondite counsels of pro- vidence. It_ dealt with present facts and unveiled their true character. It guided in the present and with regard to the uncertainties of the very near future. 'l'he bumbler office of teaching was associated with it. The prophet, a seer of visions in private and on special occasions, was a teacher e.moug his fellow-men and under ordinary circum- stances. It is important to see how essential the knowledge of truth is to a healthy spiritual life. Without it devotion becomes superstition. Religion is based on revela- tion. The school precedes the workshop. Teaching must prepar" the way for service. II. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN TEACHING AND VISION CEASE. The two may not fail exactly at the same time. But the stream will not flow long after the fountain is dried. The teaching that is continued after all inspiration has died out will be arid, formal, life- less, unreal. Ideas will ta.ke place of facts, and words of ideas. Now, the ,ision, which is the starting-point of all knowledge of truth, is intermittent. There have been ages fertile in prophecy and there have been barren ages. In the days preceding the ministry of Samuel "the Word of the Lord was rare, and there was no vision scattered abroad" (1 Sam. iii. 1). After the roll of the Old Testament was complete, prophecy ceased. It revived in the apostolic age. Spiritual insight and Divine knowledge have been intermittent since then, sleeping in the dark ages, flashing out in the days of St. Bernard, dried up by the dreariness of scholasticism, swelling out in fresh energy with the Reformation, witbering again at the end of the seventeenth century, and brightening once more from the close of the eighteenth. What shall be the next turn? III. THE ABUSE OF PROPHETIO VISION AND TEACHING LEADS TO THE CESSATION OF THEM. The prophets prophesied falsely (ver. 14). They preached peace when there was no peace ( J er. xxiii. 17). As a penalty for their treason to their sacred trust of truth they lost the gift of spiritual vision. Disloyalty to truth warps our pcrctptions 22 'l'HE LAMENTATlONS OF JEREMIAll. tou. tt. 1-:rn.
0f truth. Fnli;c living hinders true thinking. There is nothing which so deadens nnrl blinds the spiritual faculties &S indifference to truth. Beginning with telling a conscious lie, a man comt'B at l&at to accept falsehood without knowing it. IV, THE REJECTION OF PROPHETIO VISION AND TEACHING ALSO LEADS TO THE OESBA- TION OF THEM. The people were as guilty as their teachers. They refused to hear truth and asked for pleasant words. They declined to obey the truth which they had heard. The penalty of disobedience to Divine truth ,viii be the loss of that truth. If we refuse to go as the vision of God in our souls directs, that vision will fade out, leaving us no light of heaven, but only gloom or false lights of earth.