The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 200

glory had filled it., the Shechinah brightness rested on the mercy-seat. Was it to be ~magined that he who of old had smitten wit~ death those who presumed even to look mto or to touch the ark of God, who had snutten monarchs with leprosy for lack of due respect to it, would now suffer the bands of the idolaters to lay waste his sanc- tuary, in which it was enshrined? Moreover, once and again salvation for Israel had gone forth from the ti>lllple of God, deliverance and victory had there been won. 'l'he prophetic prayer of Solomon who had built it told of mercy nnd help that should surely come to Israel through that temple. Thus ancient teachings, glorious events, the manifested presence of God, many promises in connection with the temple of the Lord, all combined to lead men to look upon it with an undne trust, and to believe that! so lung as it reared its sacred front in their midst, it would prove as a palladium, a shield and defence for them all. Therefore they met all Jeremiab's warninas and all misgivings of their own conscien~es, by the oft-repeated cry," The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these I" And that which answers in our day to the Jewish trust in these" lying words," as Jeremiah terms them, is the confidence that is placed in the Church, her sacraments and ministers; or in past reli- gious experiences, or in present moods of feeling; and yet more in the endorsement of onr religious profession by our acceptance into the Church's fellowship and our admission to her ordinances. Such answer now to the "lying words" Jeremiah denounced then. But note- IL WHAT OF WORTH THERE IS IN THIS ARGUMENT. There can be no doubt that the tares owe a great deal, owe everything in fact, to the wheat amongst which they have been sown. But for the wheat, they would have been plucked up long ago. And God's dealings with men had so often confirmed what our Lord's parable teaches, that the tares had come to congratulate themselves that they had no cause for fear. -For ten righteous men Sodom would have been spared. For Moses' Hake all Israel had been borne with, when but for his intercession God's righteous anger would have swept them away. The descendants of DJJ,vid had cause many times to bless themselves that, though so unlike their great ancestor in obedience to God, they were yet of his house and lineage. " For the elect's sake," said our Lord, "those days "-days of J emsalem's final doom-" shall be shortened." And so here in the text, the people of Jerusalem could not but know that they were wicked in the extreme; but because they, though tares, were blessed with the presence of what they thought God counted as wheat-the temple and all its hallowed associations-they laughed at the idea of any great calamity coming upon them. And in the present-day parallels to that old trust in "lying words," what of worth there was in those words then, there is in the like of them now. The Church, with all its hallowed associations, is God's wheat, or rather, does assuredly contain all there is of it. For what manner of definition of the Church of God will any one presume to lay down other than this, that it consists of all the good? Brondet· it is not; but so broad it is. The presence, therefore, of the godly in any community is a guarantee of good to that community. "Ye are the salt of the earth," said our Lord. But for his Church the world would rot. Let any who sneer and persecute Christ's servants, whether in school, work-room, office, shop, or where else-and such persecu- tion is common enongh-let them remember that, but for such as those on whom they are pleased to pour their contempt, their own career would be cut very short indeed. If, then, the temple of the Lord, to which the Jews were trusting, was as the wheat, then the wicked people who were looking to it for safety were in the right, and their words were not lying words. III. ITS WOBTHLESBNESB NOTWITHSTANDING. In all those instances in which the tares had been spared for the sake of the wheat, there had been two conditions ful- filled. It had been really wheat which sheltered the tares, and there bad been !uffi- ciency of it. There was not enough of it when the Deluge came, nor when Sodom was destroyed ; and so, in like manner, should ever the wheat fall short, it will go ill with the tares then. But did the temple and its ritual and its associations fulfil either of these conditions? No doubt the mere structure, her very stones, had worth in God's eight. J Wit ae, for the sake of the dearly beloved soul that once has dwelt within th~t now lifeless corpse, we hang over it with tenderest fondneBB, and would not put it away from us were we not compelled; so, because of the true worship that had gone up from that temple, and because of the many saintly men who there had  uB. vu. 1-34.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 199