from a disappointed God. God is described as having cast out the heRthen to mRke room for the vine which he had brought from Egypt. And in the land where he planted it it grew downwards and upwards and outwards, 8preading far and wide. "Why then," say the people, "bast thou broken down her hedges, so that all which pass by the way do pluck her? 'l'he boar out of the wood doth waste it, nnd the wild beast of the field doth devour it." Once again, tliere is a very striking passage in Prov. i:xiv. 30, 31. The wise man passes the vineyard of the man void of uuderstandinl7, and finds it full of thorns and nettles, and the stone wall thereof broken down. Hente the vineyard, with its need of a strong wall kept in good repair, comes before us almost as distinctly as if it were a familiar sight. II. CoNsrn_ER _Now THE :isxnoRTATIO~ ITSELF. The wall round this vineyard of God, even this nneyard which he so plamly set apart and has cared for so much, is to be broken down. We have not far to seek for the reason. The branches of the vine are not Jehovah's. "I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" (eh. ii. 21). The wall is not yet in such case as that round the vineyard of the man void of understand- ing. It has not dropped to pieces through sloth. Its fate, it may be said, is even worse, for it has to come down by an act of judgment. Protection is a mockery and :eproach when the thing protected fails to reward the care that has been lavished upon 1t. God breaks down the fence that he may make a clear way for the removing of the branches. The branches, one may say, are fixed in a true vine and draw nourishment from good soil ; yet wild, sour, deluding, discreditable grapes are all the result. The branches, therefore, are to go, but only the branches. A full end is not to be made. The trunk, the roots, still stay. For indeed a word has, by-and-by, to be spoken by Jesus, concerning the vine and the branches, and the branches which are to abide in the vine that they may bring forth fruit. God will destroy all profitless connection with himself. If men avail themselves of the strength and opportunity which he gives to bring forth fruit, not such as will glorify him, but such as suits the perverted taste of men, then all the branches on which such fruit comes must be unsparingly cut away. And what a thought that fruit which men so much value is after all in God's sight, which gives the true estimation, a sour and worthless thing !-Y.
Ver. 14.-Those who call the word of Jehovah a lie. It has been a common folly, in connection with all the revelations which God has made at sundry times and in divers manneI'll, to despise the authority of the messengers. Noah, Moses, David, and many others up to Jesus himself, could tell, along with Jeremiah, the same essential expe- rience of contempt, rejection, and persecution. It is not for God to use those outward pomps and recommendations on which men count so much. A message unwelcome in itself is easily made of no repute when the messenger is devoid of outward state. Out- ward show, as every age can tell, counts for a great deal. Perhaps the visit of the Queen of Sheba would have been made far less of if she had not been a queen, or had come without the barbaric treasures which she spread forth in such great abundance. Simple lovers of truth, when their station happens to be obscure, are not much remarked. Here then was Jeremiah, asserting that he had come with o. message from the Lord of the utmost moment, and he is rejected with the brusque intimation that his message is a lie and he himself an impostor. And this rejection is all the more notice- able because the words of the prophet must surely have had a strange impressiveness, None of the prophets could have spoken in the routine fashion of a herald announcing the proclamation which many times, perhaps, he bas announced before. 'l'hey must all, at least in the judgment of a few, have spoken with authority and not as tho scribes. And Jeremiah at all events must have stood before the people, having el'ery channel of outward expression filled from the sad experiences and emotions of his own inward life. The rnrrows of which he spoke were as sorrows that he saw rising before his mind's eye in all the horrors of their reality. The words, as ho says in eh. xx. 9, were often words that he tried to keep back, but that which was as a burning firo shut up in bis bones must break out at last. And therefore, when the words did come, they were charged with a force of personal conviction ar.J brotherly entreaty which in itself ought to have been enough to arrest attention. Moreover, sword and famine, future calamities with all their aggravations, were not the only things of which the 011. v. 1-31.) THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 125