Vers. 1-12.-The cove1;ant with the fathe1·s binding on the children,' llere it iR necessary t-0 go back over all the history of Israel, and consider, the great covenant transactions between God and his people. S11ch transact.ions we find to have .been filled with great soler.mity, so that they might make a deep'mark in history. We trace the beginnings of the great covMant in God's dealings with Abraham. Indeed, the cove~ nant with Israel as a nation was the necessary consequence of the covenant with Abraham as an individual. Then, as Jeremiah says here, there was a definite inter- change of promise in the day when Jehovah brought Israel out of Egypt,, He could then ask them for an undertaking of obedience and separation from the idolatrous and impure heathens. ,vhile they were in servitude to E::;ypt and manifestly crushed in spirit, it was not possible to ask anything from them. But when Jehovah had abundantly pro,ed his po,ver, his grace, and his nearness, when he took his stand amid the freshness of glorious Divine achievements, then the covenant appeared, to the gene~ ration to which he proposed it, in all its fitness, as an instrument for th!l attainment of further ends. The gracious purposes of this covenant a.re made strikingly apparent in the continuance of it even after the people had lapsed into their riotous gatheri11g around the golden calf (Exod. xxxiv. 10). But this covenant in all its amplitude, arid ,l'ith all the difficulties surrounding the observance of it, is n,owhere set forth with greater solemnity and particularity than in Dent. xxvii.-xxx. There we find the curses and the blessings detailed and illustrated, and the provision made that between Ebal and Gcrizim, in the very midst a.s it were of the land of promise, the. covenant should receive a great national acceptance. "But," a.n Israelite might have said to Jeremiah, "these things happened so long ago." Men think they .can easily set aside claims that rise out of the distant past. In the case of tbi.s particular claim, however, 1~0 such rejoinder was possible. In 2 Kings xxii. we read of the discovery of the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah, and in eh, xxiii. we read of the decisive and compre- hensive action which Josiah took upon ma.king the· discovery. The description in vcr. 2 of how he gathered in the house of the Lord all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, priests and prophets, and small and great, reminds us of.the gathering long before, between Ebal and Gerizim (Josh. viii. 35). All the people, we are further told," stood to the covenant." Josiah was enabled to make a general overthrow of all the external visible instruments of idolatry, and what is of particular moment to bo oLserved is the keeping of the Passover as arising out of this renewed covenant (2 Ohron. xxxv. 1-19). It was like coming face to face with that great evl'nt in th!l early history of the people, their deliverance from the iron furnace. Thus .when we bring into on.e view all these great transactions ill relation to the.covenant, we see how weighty and urgent is the message Jehovah here SElnds Jeremiah to deliver. His coye0 nant was with a nation in the whole duration of its existence. Each generation as .it died banded on its land, its possessions, its.national customs, but in the mi~s,t of all it h,1d to hand on this covenant. The. land was Israel's only upon a certain condition. The owner of a piece of land may covenant with some one that he and his heirs and assigllB shall have the use of the land in perpetuity, on the o.bservance of certain con- ditions. If these conditions are willingly, perhaps eagerly, accepted, there .is no just rigbt to c01nplain of forfeiture if the conditions are completely and carelessly set nt m,,,o-l1t. God's works, we a.re made to observe, go on to their completion through the ,,,rvice of many generations of bis creatures. How many generations of insects bavo died in making the beautiful coral islands I We amid our spiritual light and advantages are the inheritors of many privileges. We have the use of an estate, which has been enriched by the toils and sufferings, the prayers and tears, of ruany ancestors. But we can inherit no privilege, no joy, no promise, no hope, without inheriting the respo1;1si- Lilities of a covenant. We may, indeed, neglect the covenant, but surely it_ reqmros great audacity to assert that we have even the faintest pretence of right to do 1t.-Y.
Ver. l~.-Intercession unavai1,ing. God here forbids Jeremiah to intercede for lhe peo1 ,le in their sore trouble. • Similar expressions are found in eh. vii. 16 ; xiv, 11; OH. n. 1-23.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPRE'l' JEREMIAH. 311