also be asked whether there was not a necesRity that he should do so. If Israel had to say," Jehovah acts as an enemy towards us," Jehovah had to say," My people act as nn enemy towards me." These people had now for a long time been travelling in tbe wrong way, and it was in the very nature of things that the more they advanced the more opposition should multiply and become intensified. God nut only appeared to be nn enemy, but in certain respects he really was an enemy. He hated the evil that had risen to such a height among those whom he had taken for his own. Our love for evil is ever the measure of his hate of it; and the more determined we are to cling to it, the more his hostility will appear. God himself always keeps in the same path of law und righteousness and order. When we, according to our measure, follow in his foot- steps, then real opposition there cannot be; but the moment we think fit to become a law to ourselves and do what is right in our own eyes, then inevitably he must oppose us. II. THIS ENMITY WAS LARGELY IN APPEARANCE ONLY. When Israel said that Jehovah was as an enemy, they got their idea of enmity from the hostile proceedings of individuals and communities. But God cannot be the enemy of any man as men are enemies one to another. His motives are different and so are the results of all his opposition. One man forming hostile plans against another acts from malicious motives, or at all events from selfish ones. There is no basis of reason in what he does. He is not hostile to the lower in order that he may show himself friendly to the higher. Besides, we must not look merely at outward manifestations of enmity. There may be the deepest enmity and greatest power of inflicting injury where outwardly all looks harmless. 'l'hose who profess to be our friends and whorn we reckon to be our friends may yet inflict worse injuries than all avowed enemies taken together. God is the true Friend of every man, however he may be thought at times to put on the appearance of an enemy.-Y. Ver. 9.-The prophetic office suspended. There is something of a. climax a.bout this statement that the prophets find no vision from Jehovah. Jeremiah has already spoken of God destroying the outward resources and defences of Jerusalem. Next,be mentions the exile of the king and the chief men, and then, as if to hint that it was a still greater calamity, he tells us bow the prophet had no longer anything to see or to say. He did well to magnify his own office; for no office could be more important than that of the man whom God cbose to communicate needed messages to h:s fellow-men. Observe- I. THE NATURE OF THE PROPHETIC OFFICE AS HERE INDICATED. A prophet was one who had a vision from the Lord. He was no prophet unless he could truly preface his address with "Thus saith the Lord." And must there not be something of this kind still? With respect to Divine things, what can any of us say that shall have power and blessing in it unless as we speak of what God has made us see? The prophetic office bas ceased, but who can doubt that there must be some permanent reality corresponding with it? and therefore we should ever be on the look out for men who have had visions from the Lord. All advances in the interpretation of Scripture truth must come by revelation from on high. Otherwise the most diligent searching ends in nothing but pedantry and verbosity. II. NoTICE THE DEPRIVATION HERE SPOKEN OF. What does it mean? How is it to be looked upon as part of Jerusalem's punitive visitation? The reply to this is that the institution of prophecy was part of the honour which Jehovah had put upon his people. The people could say that God was constantly raising up amongst them those whom he chose for a medium of communication. However unwilling they might be to listen to the real prophets, and however they persecuted them, still the fact remained that men like Jeremiah were rising again and again. For all we can tell, those whose written prophecies remain may have been a most minute portion numerically of !,he total company of the prophets. Now, if all at once the prophetic voice ceased or came at long intervals and with few words, this must have been most significant to those who had power to notice. It meant that God had little or nothing to say to the people. That he had communications with every individual willing to put himself in a right attitude there can be no doubt. Prophets who received nothing to give as a. message would at the same time receive all they needed for their own edification and comfort, ancl now there is an abiding vision for all. God's comnrnnications to us are not a:'ter THE LAMENTATIONS OF JER'l<IMIAH, [OR, II, 1-22,
the "sundry times and divers manners" n\ode referred to at the beginning of tho Epistle to the Hebrews. The Spirit of God revealing the uplifted Christ makee every one of us A. prophet to bimself.-Y.