1ileasure breaks upon them, A transgressor.against God iJi safe nowhere: nothincr may be visible ,to his eye, everyLhing may be going on in orderly course, and h~ may have full confidence that all is well. But notwithstanding this, events soon to happeu may prove that he has wrongly read the whole of God's providence, and that bis security is least where he thought it was greatest and most certain. Happy, and happy alone, is he who hath made the Lord God his trust, and whose hope the Lord is. 2. Con- C6Nting the Divine lo11e, We have seen wherefore these visions were given. They reveal to us that Divine love which would.warn men from ways which bring upon them such sore judgments. The desire of God to save guilty men, to leave nothing undone by which they.may be turned and kept back from evil, is manifest in all this. He would not have his message miss its mark by reason of any lack of deep impression and vivid realization of the truth on the part of the messenger.-C. Vers. 4-c-9.-Jehovah calls Jeremiah and gives him ample encouragement.~. I. Tim PURPOSE FOB WHICH JEREllDAH WAS BROUGHT INTO EXISTENCE. This is stated in a very solemn and impressive way in ver. 5. Jehovah presents himself to Jeremiah as he who formed him in the belly, and even before then recognized him as one who was to do a special work. . So with regard to Moses, Isaac, Samuel. The circumstances of their birth direc~ our thoughts to the special ends to be worked out by their earthly life. To each of them the same words might have been spoken as to Jeremiah. More- over, if true of them, this word. is true of all. · Jehovah is the Fashioner of all mankind, and since he does nothing without some purpose, it follows that for every one of us, equally with Jeremiah, there is a recognition, a consecrating, an ordaining. In a few iµstances there may be a special publication of the purpose, but the purpose itself is real in every instance. Tl\erefore our business clearly is to find out what God would have us be, our eyes open to his presence, our ears to his voice. Then if we have dis- covered what God would have us be, if there is a deepening impression on our minds that we are in the right way, this very thought, that God saw the proper work of our life or ever we entered upon it, will assure us that the work cannot fail. We shall feel that requisite strength iu the doing of it, and full success at the end of it, are made certain. The failings of life com~and it is easy to see that they must come-from putting our own purposes athwart the settled purpose of God. We may rebel against the work which he calls upon us to undertake, but it is very certain that any work put iu its place must end in disappointment and disaster. To Jonah as to Jeremiah, GoJ. might have said somewhat the same as is here recorded. It is an awful thought for sinners, in the, collapse of their own plans, that they might have been succe:;~ful and rejoicing, if only they had been from the heart obedient to the plans of God. 0
II. THE ANSWERIN~ PLEA ~F JEREMIAH. An opposing plea it can hardly be called, but it is the not astonishing statement of a difficulty that from the human point of view looks very great, When God makes his first approaches to men, asking them to do something special, what is more naturalthan that they should see huge difficult'es in_ the way of obedience? How fertile was the self-distrusting Moses in suggesting d illi- culties when God came to him in Horcb (Exod. iii. 4)? 'l'ako special notice that the difficulties of such men as Moses and Jeremiah arc not meant to be mere excuses, bu are felt to be real reasons. Such is emphatically the position here. Jeremiah was but a lad; it is possible that he had not yet attained to what we should call a young man (Geu. xii. 12 ; 1 Kings iii. 7). At such an age one is valued for listening and learning rather than for talking. That the prophet made such an initial reply to Jehovah was a. good sign rather than a bad one. Deep humility and a keeu consciousness of natural weakness are welcome features in the man whom God would make his servant. It is tolerably certain that among the elders of Anathoth Jeremiah would have the reputa- tion of being II quiet, unpretending lad. If a young man of nnother reputation had stood forward as a prophet, there would have been fair ground to charge him with presumption. But when one stands forward who ever looks doubtfully on his own abilities, is no self-asserter, and forms by preference a. member in the background of every scene, such a. standing forward at once suggests that there is some superbumau motive behind it. Jeremiah's plea is therefore a recommendation. Unconsciously he gives a. valid certificate of fitness for his work. At the same time, this plea sug~ests all the difference which there is between the youthful Jeremiah and the youthful Jesus. 1G THE BOOK OF 'fHE PROPHET JEREMIAH. [cH. 1. 1-19.