The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 204

dation from which Eli was powerless to deliver them. His own sons led the way in abominable wickedness, and became sons of Belia! even beyond others. So low had they fallen, that they had come to regard the ark of God as a kind of fetish, and hence they carried it down to battle against the Philistines, thinking thereby to certainly win the day. But the ark of God was taken, its besotted priests slain, and Eli, hearing the dreadful tidings suddenly, died, a worn-out and broken-hearted old man. From that hour, as the seventy-eighth psalm tells, God "forsook Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; . . . he refused the tabernacle of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim." And it was all because, as the same psalm tells, Israel "tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his testimonies: but turned back, and dealt deceitfully like their fathers: they were turned a.side like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images." Wherefore "he was wroth, am..' greatly abhorred Israel." And now, ages after, Jeremiah bids the people of his day go to Shiloh, and see what God did to it for the wickedness of the pe.ople. 'l'hey might trace out, perhaps, the foundations of her ancient walls, and discover the vestiges of the former sanctuary ; but now no altar bore the sacred fire, the smoke of no sacrifice ascended, no priest ministered, no God gave a:iswer, no song of the Lord went up; the whole place was probably ravaged and overthrown by the enemies of Israel, who had carried off their great treasure, the ark of God. Well might the wife of Phinehas, in the hour of her agony, call her new-born, but now fatherless, and soon to be altogether her orphan, child, I-chabod, for indeed the glory had departed, the ark of God was taken, and the Lord had forsaken Shiloh. Oh, the sorrow, the shame, the unavailing remorse which would over- whelm the faithless priesthood and the godless people, when they beheld that God- abandoned shrine, and remembered wherefore this calamity had come upon them I Yes, this story is a sad one; but it is most salutary also, and therefore we may well heed the word of the Lord which says to us, "Go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my Name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel." But we observe- !!. THAT SHILOH HAS MAJ>"Y PARALLELS. Shiloh is not the only God-forsaken shrine of which the Bible tells or of which we have bad knowledge. No; there are all too many like it. 'l'here was the temple of the Lord in Jercmiah's time. All its splendour, its solemn ritual, its lavish sacrifices, its ever-burning altar fire, could not save it. The stern sentence went forth against it, and it was burnt with fire and laid in ashes on the gronnd. There was the temple which was afterwards built on the return from Captivity, and which was so beautiful and adorned in the time of our Lord; concerning that, too, Jesus said, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate I" And it was the same with many Churches, those "spiritual houses" which, after our Lord's time and in bis Name, were reared " for a habitation of God through the Spirit." The Christian Church at Jernsalem. The honour of being the mother Church of Christendom was taken from her and transferred to Antioch, and ultimately it was overwhelmed altogether in the dei,truction that came on the city in which it was gathered. And there were the Churches of Asia; their "candlestick was removed out of its place," as ',he Lord warned them would be the case, and now secular historians bear their testi- nony to the truth of that warning word. Gibbon tells how "in the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick of the Revelation; the desolation is complete; and the Temple of Diana or the Church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. 'l'he circus and the three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes. Bardis is reduced to a miserable village; the god of Mahomet, without e. rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thye.tira. and Pergamos; and the populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by prophecy or courage. At a distance from the sea, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above four score years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and Churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of rui?s." They have thus all disappeared, as Christian Churches almost utterly; they are as Shiloh and Jerusalem-their houses in which they worshipped God left unto them desolate. And there have been many other Churches since, and some nearer our own time and in OH. VIL 1-34.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 203