The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 62

include !" recognit.ion of (1) positive disobedience-" thou hast transgressed," otc. ; (2) the multitudinous variety of sins-" and hast scattered thy ways;" (3) the disrrgard of God's voice even when he has spoken in love and urged us to return. 3. This acknow- ledgment is sujficient, "Only acknowledge thine iniquity, No sacrifice, penance, or partial reformation is first required on our part. The new and better life must begin with our return to God. Ver. 14 (second. clause, rt ancl l: will take you," etc.).-Religious individoolism. I. BY NATURE MEN LIVE SEPARATE, INDIVIDUAL LIVES, Man is social, yet he is personal. 1. Ea.eh soul has its own personality, separate from that of every other soul by im- measurable oceans. Sympathy unites souls, but does not destroy this individuality of being. Each soul has its own secret life, and the deeper the spiritual experience is the more lonely, hidden, and incommunicable will it be. There are dark recesses of con- sciousness in the shallowest heart which no stranger can fathom (Prov. xiv. 10). 2. Ea.eh soul ha.s its own separate course to live, its peculiar privileges and privations, blessings and trials, its duties which no other soul can fulfil, its reserved heritage, its vast destiny. Start.ing from near points, our lives may branch out in all directions till they a.re utterly isolated in the lonely solitudes of the infinite possibilities of being. 3. Each soul has its own necessary variety of nature. No two a.re alike. The unity of mankind is a oneness, not of unison, but of harmony. . II. 'GOD DEALS WITH MEN SEPARATELY AND INDIVIDUALLY. 1. His love is towards men as individuals. The size of the human family is no impediment to this with an Infinite Being who possesses infinite capacities of thought and affection. Even among men the parent of a large family has as individual a love for each of his children as the parent of a small family. 2. God approaches man individually. The outward voice of invitation is general: "whosoever will" is invited. But the inward voice, iu con- science and spiritual communion, is private. Yet this fact is not a restriction on our enjoyment of God's favours, for he speaks thus inwardly to all who will listen to him. III. MEN 'HUST RETURN TO GOD KEPABATELY AND INDIVIDUALLY. Each must repent, trust, 'J>ray for himself. A nation can only return as the units return, "one of a city, and two of a family." We must enter the" wicket-gate" in single file. No association- with Christendom, .a Christian nation, a Church, a Christian family, will secure our personal redemption. Even families are divided here. Each must say for himself in the singular, "I will arise;" "My Father;" " My God." Still: (1) We Ill ny help one another, and owing to the influence of sympathy there may be" two of a family," while perhaps there is only "one of a city;" (2) after we return to God we may naturally unite in his service as his family, his Church, the one body of which Christ is the Head; and (3) though a few may return at first, it is to be the work of these few to increase their number till the whole apostate family is reconciled to God. Vers. 16-18.-The 'blessings of redemption. The blessings which are here described as following the restoration of Israel a.re partly national and me.terial in form, but they conte.in, in the heart of them, those deep spiritual elements of the Messianic ideas which constitute the blessings of redemption. Note the chief characteristics of these-- L THE :NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BLESSINGS OF REDEMPTION. 1. Jt'reedom from the old life of sin. "Neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil hearts." '!'his implies (1) that the conquest of sin is itself a. good to God's people, and not merely a painful and self-denying means for securing some other good; and (2) that this conquest is to be complete and final. Bad as were the subsequent failings of the Jews after the Captivity, they were cured for ever of their old sins of idolatry and of participation in the immoral and cruel rites of their neighbours' religions. ll:any as are the defects and fallij of the Christian, these do not equal the evil of his old life. 2. .A change from the old habits of religion. The J ewe will no longer have the ark, the seat of a localized Divine presence, and they will not want this. We can never exactly recover the past. Paradise cannot be regained. The new Jerusalem will not be like the old garden of Eden. 'l'he restored Christian cannot return to the primi- tive innocence of childhood. But he need not altogether regret this impossibili~y. With the innocence of childhood there were associated its ignorance, its wee.kness, its restraints. With redemption there comea a new and larger life, The ark is lost; but cm. m. 1~25.] THE BOOK OF TiiE PROPHET JEREMIAH. &1