Ver. 14.-The occupation of the elders gone. I. TnE PLAOE OF OLD MEN IN A 'XlMMUXITY. As men grow old they may get past certain kinds of work, but they Arod not cease to be useful, nor need age become, unless from bodily frailty, a burden and a weariness. There is much for an old man to tell from the stores of his experience and observation. He may show what ought to be avoided, even if he cannot always tell what ought to be done. The elders sat in the gnte, where the throng passed in and out, and where they could see more people probably than anywhere else. An old man should endeavour to be useful and to mingle with the lifo of the world as long as he can. It is right that he should be in the way of all the respect and veneration he can receive, not because these things are necessary to his happiness, but because those who give them are the better for their giving. A society without its troops of children at one end, full of life and eagerness, and its spriukling of hoary heads crowned with glory at the other, would soon feel that very important elements were lacking. Elders sitting in the gntc borP testimony to a certain stability and continuity in the social life of Jerusalem. II. 'l'JIB PECULIAR ASPECT OF TRE CALAMITY FURNISHED BY THE FACT TH.AT THE OLD l\IE~ RAVE FORSAKEN THE GATE. There is no longer anything to take them to the :cate. Where of old they had many pleasures, now they will have nothing but pain. 'l'he place of honour would only become a place of insult, and in all likelihood only too many of these elders had been advisers of the wrong sort, men with a serene and firmly rooted confidence in their own opinion. To the warnings of a prophet old men can often reply that such things have been said over and over again without coming true; and then., when all at once the threatening takes effect, what can they do but retire into as much obscurity as possible? These fame old men, many of them, must have had much t.o do with the state of affairs that made all these calamities a Divine necessity.-Y. Ver. 16.-Discrowned Jerusalem. I. THE PAST HONOUR OF JERUSALEM. The crown has falleu from the head; a crown, therefore, has been upon the he:1.d. The lamerit is not over something striven for and not attained, but over something, as it seems, securely possessed and now irretrievably lost. Notice bow Ezekiel is instructed to put the matter (xvi. 12). Jn making Jerusalem to know her abominations there is a contrast with former privile"es. Jehovah s:1.ys, "I put a beautiful crown upon thine head . . . and thy renown ;ent forth among the heathen for thy beauty." Unques- tionably Jerusalem and the land of which she was the radiant centre shone forth gloriously among the Gentiles. The great example of this is that queen of the south who came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. God for his own purposes, inscrutable, and yet, as we must believe, beneficent, constituted it so that Jerusalem was like a fair woman crowned with a crown of pure gold. Other cities had their strength, glory, peculiarities, but Jerusalem was uniquely glorious. And so human individual8 may have most attractive natural endowments. There may be physical beauty, or genius, or some ineffable charm of character, or great intellectual capacity, something that lifts man or woman above the common crowd, and thus puts upon them a bright and manifest natural crown. The same great ~ccret power that glurified Israel glorifies men still, not for what they do, nor for any claim they have, but that in their glory they may stimulate and inspire others, and multiply the bappineHs of every life coming within their sway. It wa~ for the sake of the nations that Jehovah glurified Jerusalem and made her beautiful. II. HEB PRESENT HUMILIATION. 'fhe crown has fallen from the head, but the mark of past and lost regality remains. It cannot be obliterated. The higher a nation climbs, the further it can fall and the more terrible becomes the spectacle of its fall. It needed all the slow and majestic ascent of Rome to greatness to make Gibbon'ii great book possible. Thus, looking from such a height, he had pathetic struggles and contrasts to depict, which would else have been impossible. So, also, we contemplate err, v. 1-22.J THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAIT. 91
the aberrntions and miAerieA, the cynicism and misanthropy coming out in the lives 0f geninReB who have miRsed their way, men of richest endowments who, from the depth~ of self-indulgence and debauchery, might well cry," The crown is fallen from my hBa<l." And so we see that the great crown to be desired is, not that which comes thro11gh natural differences or differences in social position, but that which comes thro!.!gl1 the divinely inspired quality of one's living. "'l'he hoary head is a. crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness" (Phil. iv. 1; 2 Tim. iv. 8; Jas. i. 12; 1 Pet. v. 4).-Y. Ver. 17.-The faint heart and the dim eyes. I. THE PENETRATTNG EJl'l"ECT OF THE DIVINE CHABTIBEMENTB, Jerusalem had been satisfied with outward things. ·wherever it turned, there had been enough to satisfy it1:1 pride and its pleasure. Ann now Jehovah, by efficient agents, had taken these ontward things away. The difference that had been made in Jerusalem was perceptible to any eye. llut another difference could only be known when it was confessed, namely, the difference made in the hearts of the people when their outward circumstances were so completely changed. Proud, resolute meu, foll of joy in their selfish purposes, found the interest of life completely gone. It would have availed nothing if all these chastisements had ended in leaving the people real Stoics, able to say that it was all the same whether they kept their temporal possessions or lost them. God did not desolate Jerusalem for any delight that he took in this; it was to find a way to humble hearts that were unsubdued after every prophetic appeal. When men are delightedly occupied with the things of sense, then it is a great end gained if, through losses and changes, their hearts become faint and their eyes dim. For then they may accept the ministry of Christ to put into their hearts an energy which will tend for righteousness and direct their eyes to look on the world in the right way. II. 'l'HE CAUSE HERE SPECIALLY MENTIONED. The hill of Zion has become a desola- tion; it has become again a mere height in the wilderness, snch as doubtless it had been at some time before in the immemorial past. That Zion is here specified seem~ to point to the sorrow and despair caused by the overthrow of religious ordinances. The very fact that Jehovah had allowed the place devoted to him to become thus desolated ma.de his displeasure with the people to become a much more vivid thing. It seemed as if he needed no more a. habitation in their midst.-Y.