COVENANT. It would be a mistake to describe it as a covenant that failed. Paradoxical as the expression sounds, the very breaking of the covenant furnished the proof of its success. It made man's position clearer to him ; it prepared the world for Christ. The old covenant had been broken in spite of all the teaching connected with it. " Enow Jehovah " had been dinned into the ear, and doubtless many had a notion that they did know Jehovah, whereas all that they knew was a certain round of ritual observances. At all events, it was a knowledge that left iniquity unforgiven and sin still registered in the book of God's remembrance. It was such a knowledge as the wrong-doer has of his judge. It was the knowledge of a force that thwarted all selflshness, and came with overwhelming completeness to ruin the plans of man. It was not the knowledge coming from trust and leading to greater trust — knowledge of God as a Guide, Director, and Provider. Tet some indeed knew. The man who said to his neighbour and his brother, " Enow Jehovah," must have been, in some instances at least, one who himself had some real knowledge. As there were men of the reforming spirit before the Reforma- tion, so there were Christians in essence before Christianity. The breaking of the old covenant shows the thing that was needed, namely, a new power in the hearts of men. The knowledge of God is not to be gained by mere teaching. Teaching has its place, and withia its own limits is indispensable ; but who could teach a child to eat, to see, to hear ? If faculties are not inborn, we cannot do anything with them.
IL Thk confident fbeoictions on the new covenant. The old covenant starts with law ; the new one springs out of life. Ver. 33 gives one of the Old Testament ways of expressing the doctrine of regeneration. God writes the laws of spiritual life on the heart, just as he writes the laws ot' natural life on every natural germ ; and then all the rest is a matter of unfolding, of growth, of encouragement, of culture. The old covenant was one long, exhaustive, thorough experiment by which the fact became clear thnt in the natural man there was nothing to unfold. The new covenant esta- blished within a very brief period that, given a new life-principle working within him, man is indeed a being of glorious capabilities. The first man of the new covenant, in point of quality, is of course the Maii Christ Jesus himself. OtoA's Law was written in the heart of his Son. Here is one way in which the Law and the prophets are com- pleted. The ark with its inscriptions vanishes ; we bear nothing of it later than oh. iii
OH. xxxiL 1—44.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEBJiMIAH. «
16. And in its place there comes the loving heart trusted to the utmoBt liberty. Well might there be confidence in speaking of the new coveuant. When good seed and good soil and favourable circumstaDces meet, then there is certainty of perfect and abundaat fruit. The new covenant is above all things a covenant with the individual. It is made to depend upon individual susceptibility and individual fidelity. Also it is a knowledge that comes in repentance, forgiveness, and favour. And all this teaches us that a special meaning must be put into the term, " people of God." The true people of God are constituted by the aggregation of individual believers. They do not begin their journey to the heavenly land of promise marching as one constrained company tniuugh a miraculous Red Sea passage ; they rather go, one by one, through • ■traitened entrance, even through a needle's eye, some of them. — Y.
Vers. 35 — 37. — The seed of Israel ; signs of its everlasting duration, L Thbt abb siQHB WITH MUCH REVELATION OF GoD IN THEM. The suu, the moou, the stars, the heavenly spaces with all their occupants, the terrestrial surface with the fathomless depths beneath it. We shall never know all that is to be known about these exist- ences; but we may soon know enough to know througli them something of their Maker. That they are the common work of one hand, the common expression of one wisdom and love, soon becomes plain. The unity of all we see is a truth becoming clearer in the light of t^cientilic investigation. God drove Israel from the land they had polluted and forfeited by their idolatries ; but their share in the common possessions of mankind remained. It is plain that man gets good from all these signs here mentioned, and the largeness of the good depends on the righteousness and understanding shown in the use.
II. Thet ABE SIGNS WITHIN THE COMPREHENSION OF ALL, Evcn a child Can be made to understand the unfailing regularity that belongs to them. They are signs all over the world. It is not a sign drawn from Jerusalem or from anything comparatively stable in the Isrnelites' peculiar experience. Sun and moon and stars know nothing of national distinctions. Each nation doubtless can claim its territory to the very centre of the globe, tuit beyond a certain depth, that globe is defiant of them alL One man 'may know more than another of the constitution of these signs, by reason of peculiar opportunities, but all can know enough for the purpose here required.
IIL Thet are signs drawn from God's independent operation. Not from opeia- tions which as a general rule depend on our co-oijeration. Uod's operations in sun, moon, and stars are induijendent of us — unaffecti.d by our disobedience, our negligence, unsteadiness ; uplifted far above our interference. Indeed, what can show more clearly how God's operations on the e.irth's surface are interfered with by human ignorance and indolence than the contrast with heaven's regularity ?
IV. The thing signified will outlast the signs. The thing signified is the jverlasting duration of the seed of Israel. That seed will remain when the signs them- jelves, having done their work, are vanished. The things that are seen are temporal. As our body is but the earthly house of this tabernacle, so the visible universe itself is but as the tabernacle wbirein God dwells with us. But all these visible things will come to their end vvlien they have done their work, not through failure of Divine power. They will disappear into a more gloiious transformation, aid serve some purpose to God's true Israel, the very outlines of which we cannot yet comprehend. — T.
EXPOSITION.
CHAPTER XXXIL
Jeremiah was far from wishing to depress his fellow-couutrymen to the point of dis- believing in the inalienable promises of God to Israel. He fully recognized an
the God of his people Israel, though for
wise purposes he chose to hide his face for a time. His own fuith was intense, to the pitch of an even Roman lieroism (see Livy, xxvi. 11). The opportunity, (or rather — see below — the right) nI purchasing a piece u(