The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 429

can choose. \Ve all have onr choice of the essentials of position, 'l'hcre are two sets of circumstances-those we cannot choose and those we are bound to choose. It is in tho power of us all to be planted by the waters. God's gifts of graee flow through fixed and well-defined channels, and to these we must go. We arc not allowed to mako compromises. A very little seeming difference may, in reality, make all the diffurence bct~·een wisdom and folly in this matter. It did not need that the tree should be planted very far a~•ay from the water, a few yards more or less mioht determine tho result. There is also in this illustration the notion of a hidden mea~s of supply. 'fo outward appearance there is no connection l1etween the tree and t_he river; the connection is underneath, and it is real, increasing, and constant.-Y. - Vers. 9, 10,-The searching and knowing of the heart. One is reminded here of the oft-q11oted piece of advice, "Know thyself." _The prophet's assertion places man before us as the victim of self-ignorance, self-confirlence, and self-deception. He talks of truth when bis mind is full of error, and thus he is prevented from taking the only real way by which he can attain to the knowledge of truth.· In the prophet's assertion and ques- tion, and the Divine answer given to the question, there is much which upon the first aspect may humiliate. But the humiliation will itself _prove a cause for rejoicing if only H leads us to profit by God's certain knowledge in matters when we are profoundly ignorant. I. Trrn.--x OF THE VAST AND INCREASING EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. If a man be ignorant of bis own heart it surely cannot oe because he himself is unfitted for the knowledge. He may have become urifit, and the unfitness may, by neglect, become moi·e pronounced, but be cannot be unfit by reason of his original ,constitution. One may say that God must have intended him to have sufficient knowledge to keep his 'inward life right. Otherwise we have this curious contradiction--'-that man has, achieved an immense amount of knowledge with respect to his physical constitution, but is doomed to remain in uncertainty and bewilderment as to the laws of a healthy and a happy inward life. "Who can know the heart?" says the :prophet. -And yet even with tho limited knowledge of his age there were many men, doubtless, who knew many things, ViT e all li.ave the powers of observation, comparison, and experiment, and it is the largest pleasure of somo minds to exercise these powers. And yet it is just to-minds that are most trained, most confident in the principles of scienoe, and most stored with the resnits of it, that this question might bo put. It is not a question for the child just beginning to learn or for the savage unaccustomed to think; let it be put to man in his highest civilization, and then the fact will be seen that the question is no vain and inappropriate one. II. Tb us we are led to notice THE DREADFUL. IGNORANCE WlHCII. MAY PREVAIL IN THE MIDST OF ALL THIS KNOWLEDGE. The progress of the world does not mako the prophet's question one whit less pressing.' Nay, it becomes more pressing than eye1', Other objects of knowledge have an ever-increasing light cast upon' them, and by the very force of the contrast man's inward life appears in still deeper dal'kness. What- ever the cause of the con tinned ignorance may be; that ignoran·ce does continue, ·so far as man's unaided effort to remove it is concerned. In one single mind we too often see exemplified vast intellectual knowledge and complete spiritual ignorance, He who seems to know everything does not know bis own heart, and apparently does not care to know it; reminding one of the man who had travelled over the whole world and yet had never beheld a scene as wonderful as any which was visible from a point on his own estate. The time is coming when knowledge wiU vanish away. But- the neglected heart will still remain to force itself, in a way which cannot be resisted, upon the thoughts of its long indifferent possessor. . III. THE CAUSE OP THIS IGNORANCE JS MADE PLAIN. It all lies in the deceitfulnefs and utter corruption of the human heart. And notice in particular that it is by the heart that the heart is to be known. Heart-knowledge is not like other kinds of knowledge; it depends on the character of him who knows. 'l'bere is no essential contradiction belween high intellectual acquirements and a hard, selfish, and perhaps even, in somo instances,a profligate life. Men of refined tastes and great intellectual sensibilities may be thoroughly selfish, careless about the toil and suffering of tho world, so long as these plant no thorn in their pillows, infuse no bitterness into their cup. But one who would know the heart must be very sure of bis own motives, otherwise he mny make human 011. x~u. 1-27.] 'l'HE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 43/i