Vers. 1 — 30. — The end of Jeremiah; or, going dotvn in eJoitds. With this chapter Jeremiah disappears from view. The sadness which surrounded his iirst ministry accompanies it to the last and deepens at its close ; like a sunset in clouds, going down in darkness and storrn. The path along which he had been led had been a via crucis, a via dolorosa indeed ; a lifelong tragedy, an unceasing pain. We can only hope that death came soon to him after his recorded history closes. We have seen him torn from his native land and carried down to Egypt. We see him in the forty- tliird chapter at the border of the land ; in this, in the heart of Egypt, at Pathros, probably forced to witness the degrading idolatry of his people, and unable to do anght to prevent it. An idol festival, accompanied, doubtless, with all the wonted pollutions of such worship, is proceeding, and he lifts up his voice once more in stern protest. Gut in vain, as heretofore. He vanishes from our view at an hour when his country- men, so far from being less addicted to idols, were now open in their sin, vaunting it and di.claring their determination to adhere to it, and their regret that they had ever done otherwise. What a farewell between a minister of Grod and the people of his charge I There never was but one other like it — the farewell of him who said, as he wept over another doomed Jerusalem and a future Jewish people, " Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." What became of Jeremiah from this date we know not. " No man kccweth of his sepulchre unto this day." "' There is the Christian tradition rest- ing doubtless on some earlier belief, that the long tragedy of his life ended in actual martyrdom, and that the Jews at Tahpanhes, enraged by his rebukes, at last stoned him to death." The testimony to the martyrs at the close of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews is thought to contain allusion to him : " They were stoned" — so we read. There is a Jewish tradition, however, which says that he made his escape to Babylon, but Josephus, like the Bible, is utterly silent as to the prophet's end. And it has been suggested that the tradition of the Jew and the silence of the historian are alike owing to a desire to gloss over some great crime. The suggestion is a probable one. " But he did not need a death by violence to make him a true martyr. To die with none to record the time or manner of his death was the right end for one who had spoken all along, not to win the praise of men, but because the Word of the Lord was in him as ' a burning fire.' The darkness and doubt that bruod over the last days of the prophet's life are more significant than either of the issues which present them- selves to men's imaginations as the winding np of his career." " But a csireful examina- tion of his writings show that, whilst the earlier ones are calmer, \uftier, more uniform in tone, the latter show marks of age and weariness and sorrov;, ii d are more strongly imbued with the language of individual suffering." How glad >e would have been had the clouds lifted ere he died, and a gleam of sunshine had irrudiated the hitherto almost unbroken gloom ! Some of the prophets were permitted to have a blessed onlook into the better days tliat were coming. He who wrote the cloi Jng portion of Isaiah's prophecies did so ; like Moses from Mount Pisgah. But it was not so to be with thic jirophet of God. His sun was to go down in clouds, and, though he had faithfully kept God's commandments, there was not for him in this life any " great reward." Though out of love for his countrymen ho had refused the offer of & peaceful and honoured home in Babylon, like Moses, " clioosiui^ rather to suffer affliction with the people of God," he yet failed to win their aflLCliou or obedience ; and they remained in the same evil mind to the last. He had walked in the fear of the Lord. But those ways had not been for him " ways of pleasautuess," nor its paths " paths of peace." The broken- hearted old man appeals to God and man, " Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." The twenty-second psalm — that which seems to tell so clearly of the sufferings of our Lord — is thought by many to have been written by him, and tc tell of his own deep distress. Priest, patriot, prophet, martyr, hero of the faith indeed, what a life «ras thine from beginning to end, from thy first call by God to thy last jxBEHiAH — ^a.
lai THE BOOK OF THE PROPHE'i JEREMIAH, [ch. xliv. 1—30.
rejection by men ! These lines, translated for our day, and sung by our comfortabla congregations — with what consistency they who sing them best linow—
« If I find him, if I follow, What his guerdon here? Many a sorrow, many a laboiWi Many a tear ; "
— ^are applicable enough to one like that great prophet of God, whose career began, con- tinued, and, most of all, ended, in sorrow, labour, and tears. But the review of such a ministry must assuredly have its lessons. As we think of it are we not reminded —
I. Of " THE Man of sorrows," our Lord Jesus Christ ? (Of. homily on Jeremiah's ministry, vol. i. p. 9.) No doubt other great servants of God, whose ministry and especially whose end have been like that of Jeremiah, come into the mind. John the Baptist in Bible history, and Savonarola in later days. The parallel between this great Florentine prciioher and our prophet has often been noticed. The insistance upon spiritual religion, the sad and terrible close of his career, — these have led many to look upon Savonarola as the Jeremiah of the Middle Ages. But these resemblances are incidental and undesigned. That, however, between our Lord and his honoured servant who, in so many ways, preceded him, is not incidental, nor can it be called unde- signed. But whilst the prophet is hke our Lord in so many respects, yet, great as were his sorrows, those of the Man of sorrows were greater still. For our Lord knew more ot the evil of sin and hated it more intensely. He sacrificed more and endured more. And so the experience of the prophets, like that of all God's servants, only goes to show that Christ has sounded deeper depths of sorruw than any that his servants can aver know.
" Christ leads tu thiongh no darker toom Than he's been through oefore."
Hence always " underneath," however deep the depths out of which we cry, "ar* the
everlasting arms " of his sympathy and love and help.
II. Of the lightness of our burdens compared with those of many of the BEBVANTS OF GoD? How it shames us to think of the things we murmur about, when we contrast them with what such men as Jeremiah cimiinually endured ! Su'ely as we think of the severity of his cross, and especially that of our Saviour, we shall cease to complain of what ours may be.