The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 504

increase in splendour. The king who can rise above all temptations to mere outward show; who can be gloriously independent of selfish traditions and examples; who can show the spirit of a real king by living for his people, instead of expeotina his people to drudge and sweat and groan for him ;-this is the king ,vhom God ~ill reward. The reward will come in the very way such a man will desire, His throne will become more stable for his successors; the land more prosperous and better worth living in. On the other hand, if there is negligenco of these counsels, the rnin of the no~ligent ruler will be correspondingly teITible, No man, however great his resources, can Luild up anything glorious and satisfactory on a foundation of disobedience to God. Against that tree of temporal prosperity which bas been planted in selfishness and nurtured in selfishness, a consecrated axe is laid-laid at the root of the tree to cut it down altogether. The greatness of the prosperity measures the greatness of the ruin. We must delight in the Law of the Lord if we would be as trees of God's own planting; and then, assuredly, no weapon formed against us can prosper.-Y. Ve!'S. 10-12.-The mistakes of the mourner. Two persons are presented here as furnishing occasions for lamentation. One is Josiah, King of Juda.h,..la,telydead; the other is Shallum, his son, just succeeding him, and ta-ken into captivity by Pharaoh- N cchoh, King of Egypt. The prophet, therefore, looks upon his countrymen as sorrowing both for the dead and the living. Moreover, he sees that, in accordance with all the natural tendencies of the human heart, a deeper sorrow is professed for the. dead than for him who has been taken away into a foreign land, And yet this was not accord- ing to the necessities of the position. The captivity of Shalluru, rightly considered, was a more distressing event than the death of his father. , It may be truly said that we always exaggerate death as a calamity. In the instance of Josiah, his comparatively early death-for he seems to have been no more than forty when he perished in battle- l)roduced peculiar feelings of pity. He seemed to be one whose "sun had gone down while it was yet day." But we must remember that this very death had been prophe- tically spoken of as a blessing (2 Kings xxii. · 20): " Thine eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place," For one who is faithfully trying to serve God, it can matter very little when he dies. His service goes on, A man may benefit the cause of God more by the faithful testimony of a Christian death than by fifty years of continued work. If a man bas come to death by his own folly and recklessness, we do well to grieve over him; but death in itself is an event which we may only too easily come to look at in a distorted, exaggerated way. There are things far worse than death. .A.gain and again it happens that people fall into severe illnesses, recover, and then return into the world, only to find that the years seemingly added iu mercy to life have become a period of disaster and shame, In the midst of a world of misery, we cannot be too pitiful, too sympathetic, but we must be careful not to make erroneous estimates as to what most deserves our pity and sympathy. We can do nothing for the dead. When the last breath is breathed, there is straightway a great gulf fixed between us and them, But we may do much for the living, if onlyin a self-denying spirit we keep them in our recollection and strive to help them; seizing every oppor~ tunity, and,economizing our energies so aa to 111ake the most of it.,,.....Y. : Vers. 13--19.-A right aim pursued_by a wrong. and cruei.method. I. A,.ntGHT AIM. What this aim was:is indicated in ver, 15. Jchoiakim wanted, to be a .king. In one sense he was a king, without any effort of his own, for·he hacL succeeded-to the position and honours of bis fatlier. J3ut very rightly he sought to be ,re-0konecL :a king by vwtue of something more· ,than mere rank. .. He wished to do something' :which would mark off his reign as peculiar. He wished something more to be said of him than that be merely reigned so many years. His office would have made him to be remembered in a certain way, but he preferred that his office should be a mere vantage- ground to give him the chance of showing what be could do as a man. _Bad as Jehoiakim was, he had individuality of character-a strong feeling that a king was bound to do something more than just sit on a throne, wear a crown, and hold a sceptre in his band. There is nothing pleasing to God in our being mere colo~rless copies of those who have gone before ue. Jehoiakim was right in so far as he wished lo go in a way that wa,e more than the mere beaten track of others, on. xxm. 1-10.J THI~ BOOK 01:t' THI!] PROPHET JEREMIAH. 511