The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 174

~entinel who guards the approaches of the soul against its deadly foes; to pierce aoc.. undermine those blessed walls which keep ba.ck the inrush of the ocean upon the whole land, Let us not do aught like this. But pray- " Quick as the apple of the eye, 0 God, my consciooce make, Swift to discern when sin is nigh, And keep it still awake." 3. Is sin upon your conscience now? At once confess it, and so find from your Lord forgiveness for it, and more-deliverance from it and from all possibility_of that dread sin which the text describes and which bath never forgiveness.-U. Ver. 16.-The good old paths. It is noticeable in the order of nature how God bas secured the true adjustment and hence the highest well-being of his universe by means of the action of contrasted and opposite forces. By means of that power which the mighty mass of the sun has to draw everything to itself-if this were left alone to <Dperate, the whole of those innumerable orbs that now circle round the sun as their a:entre would be drawn in upon it and perish. But this is prevented by the action of an opposite force, called the centrifugal, as the first-mentioned is called the centripetal. This opposite force tends, by the velocity with which the planets revolve around the sun, to drive them off and away from it: thus, by the effect of these opposite forces, that perfect harmony and unerring order of the whole stellar universe, which has been the admiration of all observers in all ages, are preserved. Chemistry also can furnish illustrations not a few of the beneficent action of opposite forces, where either left alone would work only harm. In the great law of sex, the constitution of all life, plant life as well as animal, as male and female, this in all its aspects is another marked instance of the same Divine method. In political life, the two great tendencies, monarchial and democratic, or the rule of the one versus the rule of the many-the mutual strugglings of these two-keep the world in such equilibrium as we see. In reli- gion, the Catholic principle which makes self nothing, and the Protestant principle which makes self all-important, each man having to give an account of himself to God,-these are both designed to contend the one against the other, and whilst Catholicism is to check the selfish individualism into which Protestantism is apt to lapse, Protestantism is in its tum to struggle against that servility of mind into which the principle of self-abnegation, the essential principle of Catholicism, is prone to degenernte. It is in the resultant of these two forces that the purest form of religious life is found. And in regard to the life of obedience to God, the life which he would have us live here on earth, that, too, is governed by the action of opposed laws. There is the law which works through our bodily nature, and which if left alone would make us, not in body only but in soul, of the earth earthy, for ever "grovelling here below." But there is the opposed law which works through our spiritual nature; but, blessed as it is, it needs to be disciplined and made perfectly healthful to us by means of the salutary necessity of giving heed in due measure to the lesser law just spoken of. 'l'he first preserves us from being mere enthusiasts, the second from the far greater peril of enslavement to the world, the flesh, and the devil acting through them. And in those two tendencies, one of which is plainly referred to in this sixteenth verse and the other implied, the love of the old is contrasted with the love of the new. Here, again, we have et before us two great forces in humanity, which by their mutual contentions preserve it tolerable health and comfort, and ensure its steady, onward progress. Conservatism and liberalism are not the products of any one national revolution, like our own iu 1688, but-they are two God-implanted tendencies of the human mind, each of which has its appropriate and most useful function, and neither of which can be dispensed with without harm to the whole body politic in every nation under the sun. To lie ~ike a Jog on the ocean of human life, useless and despised amid the nationalities of the world, is the doom of those who will blindly close their eyes to the fresh light aml truth which are for ever breaking forth upon the world; to run upon the rocks a.nu make shipwreck of everything is the doom of those who despise the teachings of experience, and care only to be for ever finding out some new way and to follow some new guide, But Jet these two act and react each on tho other-the love of the ohl  li2 THE IlOOK OF THE PROPHET JEHEMIAH. [en. VI, 1-30.