The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 111

nnd to attract the hitherto worshippers of idols. They say that a man is known by his friends. If the man be one not yet seen, living nt a distance, he can only be juilged or by those professing to be his friends, with whom we come into actual inter- course. If those whom we see be upright, generous, magnanimous, loving, we she.II have no difficulty in crediting that the unseen one is the same. Israel havina been what it had been, it was little wonder if the heathen came to have a very poor a°pinion of Jehovah. But Israel is now called to a very different life, and, in particular, to rnakc such a use of the oath as that the nations shall not merely have their opinion of Jehornh altered, but shall find in him a source of blessing to themselves and one in whom, without risk of shame and confusion, they can continually glory. Jehovah, God of Israel, ,~bom Israel at last has truly honoured, obtains then more than a bare n~knowledgment. He is exulted in as Lord and Benefactor to all the nations of the earth. "Ar.d I heard ns it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigncth" (Rev. xix. 6). This is the consummation of creation's choral song, and it comes from practising truth, jt1stice, and righteousness in such a way as will fully please Jchovah.-Y. Ver. 3.-Thoroughness in spiritual culture. There is put before us here an agri- cultural fi;;ure, which our observation of fallow ground in England, et present, fails to gi,e us the power of understanding. When we look at an English ploughman turning a piece of meadow-land into arable, there does not seem anything very difficult abont his work. Why, then, should breaking up the fallow ground be so hard? Why should. this be reckoned an appropriate figure for something evidently difficult, some- thing, it would seem, habitually shirked and the necessity of attending to which the men of Judah and Jerusalem did not sufficiently recognize? 'fhe answer is to be found in a state of things which, after all our efforts, will probably present itself imperfectly to the mind. By many of the Hebrew busbandmen the cultivation of their land seems to have be,·n managed in a very imperfect, cnreless, happy-go-lucky sort of way. In the moveless East, what things are to-day tell us pretty well what they were two thousand yC'ars ago. Dr. Thomson, spfaking of the plain of Gcnnesaret-a distric.t wl,ich J oseplrns describes as extremely fruitful-says, "Genncsaret is now pre-eminently fruitful in thorns. They grow up among the grain, or the grain among them." And again on the same page, "'Jbese farmers all need the exhortation of Jeremiah, 'Break up your fallow gronrnl, and sow not among thorns.' They are too apt to neglect tliis; nnd the thorns, springing up, choke the seed, so that it cannot come to maturity" (' Land and the Book,' p. 348). The truth, then, was that the land was but half reclaimed from the wil,lerness. To have properly reclaimed it, and then kept it in a satisfactory state, 'l'l"Ould have required a great deal of trouble. And since from such fertile lane! the husbandman, with but little effort, could get enough to serve the passing day, he did not concern himself to make the land do its best. Hence we see that this admonition, whatever its first aspect of obscurity, is really a most important one for all of us. The exhortation 13 to nothing less than thorough- '/iess in Fpiritual culture. Thoroughness in the cultivation of the heart, as a soil wl1erein the seeds of Divine truth are sown, pays in the highest sense of the word. Look at what science, skill, and the bold investment of capital for the enrichment of the soil and for machinery to save labour, have done for modern farming. 'l'he full p:·oductivcness of God's enrth seems to be apprehended by comparatively few. And if this is so in things natural, there is no wonder at all that we should be so little c/Jnscious of the thoroughness required in cultivating our spiritual nature. There are m;iny human hearts where subsoil ploughing is as yet unknown. There is e. soil that grows an abundant crop from plants of human origin, but the seed that God sows citl:er falls dead or dies after a brief struggle to find bold and sustenance in the heArt. 'l'lie word through Jeremiah here is but the germ from which our Lord expounded his 1,nrable of the four kinds of soil. There is bid on each one of us a heavy burdeu-the Rtewardsbip of a human heart. And yet it is a precious and hononrable burden. Far Licyo11d the ripcst, sweetest, and most copious fruits of the soil beneath our feet, is the fruit that may come from within us. Dut the culture must be thorough. True, that menus toil, patience, watchfulness, discrimination; but what great work was ever done wit!irJut. t 1,c:n ?-Y,  cu. 1v. 1-31.] 'l'IIE DOOK OF THE PROPHET JEP.EMIAII. 107