Vcrs. 25, 26.-Impru·fial fustice. I. SPECIAL PRIVILEGES DO NOT INTERFERE WITII THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JL"STICE. Judah is specially privileged, and prizes circumcision as a seal of the peculiar favour of Heaven (Gen. xvii. 9-14). Yet Judah must take its place in the indiscriminate catalogue of corrupt nations. If privileges are noted in God's exercise of justice, this call only be as an aggravation of guilt. The citizens of favoured nations, the heirs of rank and wealth, persons whose lives have been peculiarly successful and unvisited with the usual amount of-trouble, all stand in this position. Their present happy condition is no guarantee for favour in the day of Divine judgment, but, on the contrary, a reason for regarding the ingratitude of sin as, in their case, the more culpable. II. TJIE OBSERVANCE OF EXTERNAL ORDINANCES HAS NO INFLUENCE ON TIIE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE. Their utility is solely as regards their effect on men. 'l'hey are profitable only in so far as they assist the corresponding spiritual acts, which are all that God takes note of (Col. ii. 11). The circumcised in body who are not circumcised in heart will suffer just as if they had never been circumcised at all. The ordinance without the spirituality is an offence rather than a pleasing thing. It shows knowledge; it is a mockery to God. Thie must be so, (1) because God is spirit; and can only be served spiritually; and (2) because the highest justice ie concerned with thonghts, motives, deeds of the soul, rather than with the ambiguous actions of the outer life. lIL No EXCEPTIONS WILL DE MADE TO THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OJ' Drv1NE JUSTICE. All kinds of nations are classed together. Cultivated Egyptians and wild Arabs, scrupu- lons Jews and idolatrous Ammonites, all come before the same judgment-bar, all have the same fair trial and righteous sentence. 1. The heathen are not excluded from God's judgment; for (1) he is the God of all the earth, and of those who ignore him_ as well as of those who recognize him; (2) the heathen have a light of nature and a conscience by which to guide their conduct; (3) God's judgment is reasonable, and can adapt requirement to opportunity, so that the heathen will have as just treatment as those who are more privileged. 2. 'l'he Jews and professedly religious are not excluded. Many people make an utterly unwarrantable assumption that their respectability, position in the Church, etc., are such that the stern ordeal of the judgment ie not for them. In his vision of judgment Christ made no such exceptions (Matt. xxv. 31-46).
HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver. !.-Vicarious grief. It is a common occurrence in the history of God's Church that when general indifference to religious truth! to impending judgments, or dcpra:ved spiritual condition, etc., is exhibited by the multitude! one or at most _a few are sensible of the nature and extent of the evil. Knowledge m such a case 1s nearly always sorrow. This is intensified when rcmonstrances arc unheeded, and efforts of reform are defeated. It is the righteous man, the reformer, who is most aff~ctcd by the situation, and who feels most keenly the disgrace and danger. I. IN TIIE IDGHEST THINGS IT IB THE FEW TIIAT MUST FEEL FOR THE MANY. This has been the law from the beginning. It is a necessity of nat_ur~. It is a Divine appointment. Pure feeling, even when painful, appears as a stewardship m one. or two hearts, perhaps in one alone. Joseph is moved to tears at the heartlcssn~ss of his breth~en. Jonathan is ashamed for his father Saul. Elijah laments in lonelmess and despair the apostasy of Israel. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem; painfully wonders at the slowness of heart to believe exhiuited by his own d~ciples; ie "sore amazed" at the cup of iniquity_ he has to drink. Jeremiah is here evidently in the same succession of vicarious eufferrng. Wo sec the same principle working in our own circle of acquaintance. Men, :women, sorrow- ing and suffering for others, who are themselves unconscious or arc Jlartmlly so. OH. IX.1-26,} THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET Jll:REMIAH. 247