AND WORTHY. 1. The mission of prophery is to see and declare wisdom and reality. The attractiveness ot the teaching is a snare if the matter of it is vain. People natur- ally favour the pleasant utterance of pleasant things. Doctrines are sonietiiues chosen because they are liked rather than because they are known to be sound, or the style and language of the preacher are more heeded than the sulstance of his message. But, if we were in earnest, ugly truths would always be accepted in preference to specious falsehoods. 2. The corruption of prophecy substitutes falsehood and folly for truth and wisdom. This may be experienced unconsciously. The teacher may not know that he has fallen. It is not only that his tongue utters lies, his eye sees no truth. His vision is distorted and he knows it not. He is not aware that he sees men as trees walking. Nor does he know that his folly is not wisdom. The failing of spiritual vision and decay of wisdom are the more calamitous because they are unconscious. They are a sort of spiiitual insanity. 3. The evil of the corruption of prophecy is in the widespread delusion and degradation that it produces. " Thy prophets have seeu vain and foolish things for thee." The prophet is a teacher as well as a seer. When the teacher errs the scholars are misled.
II. The failure to discover iniquity is a proof that a prophet's yniON is FALSE AND FOOLISH. 1. A prophet is required to see human as well as Divine truth. It needs inspiration to read the secrets of the heart as much as to discover the mysteries of the unseen heavens or of the distant future. A prophet should be a discerner of spirits. If he cannot read the signs of the times he is a failure, 2. The failure to see iniquity is one especial evidence of perverted prophetic vision. The physician is first of all called upon to discover his patient's disease. If he cannot detect this the rest of his work is of little use. Prophets may dream of the millennium and discourse of the celestial spheres ; but so long as they are blind to the sins that men around them are perishing in, their primary mission must fail. Now, it needs a Divine inspiration rightly to see iniquity. Conventionality of thought leads to a complacent satisfaction with the normal state ot the world. We must be out of it and above it to observe how it has fallen. The preacher who cannot see the sins of his age is worse than useless. He is a deluding flatterer. The individual man who is blind to his own sin has not the first ray of spiritual light which may guide him aright.
III. The FALSE AND FOOLISH VISION OF PROPHECY DOES NOT RESTORE PROSPERITY,
BUT ON THE CONTRARY IT DIRECTLY LEADS TO RUIN. By vainly promising pleasant things it brings disastrous ones. The false prophets opposed Jeremiah and said the Captivity would not come. By that very falsehood they helped to hasten it. Had they preached repentance and warned of wrath, the doom might have been averted. None prepare souls lor ruin more certainly than smooth-speaking flattering optimists. When danger is near, the warning prophet may be the deliverer of his hearers. If the preacher fail to produce conviction of sin he cannot lead to salvation in Christ. So long as men do not see their lost condition they are in danger of their soul's ruin. To them a pleasant religion is a fatal religion. A Jeremiah, a John the Baptist, and a John Knox are the best friends of their generation,
Ver. 16. — The triumph of the foe. I. The triumph of the fob over Jbrubalem. Strangers mock with scorn and derision, enem'^* veot their rage with hissiiag, gnashing
0H.II.1— 22J XHJli LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. 23
of teeth, and a spiteful satisfaction that the day they have looked for has come. Why should these cruel feelings be roused against the prostrate city ? Her previous condition must have provoked them. 1. Great prosperity. This exciies envy in the less pros- perous, and envy souu sours into hatred. Jealous and seltish natures have a positive pleasure in seeing the loss of special privileges in the more favoured, although that loss may bring no advantage to themselves. 2. High pretensions. Jerusalem claimed to be especially favoured and blessed by God. She looked down with scorn on her neigh- bours. IJuch an attitude was galling to them and led to an outburst of delight when the proud city lay grovelling in the dust. Contempt provokes enmity. No calamity receives less pity than the downfall of pride. 3. Reserved isolation. Jerusalem kept herself apart from other cities. She felt that she had a peculiar vocation. Such exclusive- ness would excite dislike. The unsocial are unpitied. It may be that the separation is inevitable or conscientious. Still, it incurs not the least aversion.
II. The teiumph op Ihe foe ovbb the Church. The fall of Jerusalem was the fall of the Church. The enemies of the Eternal rejoiced in the destruction of his temple and the scattering of his people. There are always adversaries on the look out for disaster in the Church of Christ. The evil spirit of the world is vexed and shamed by the standing rebuke of a pure Church. Corrupt men see in her an example con- trasting with their own conduct and thereby condemning it. Thus there arise dislike and enmity. The shame of the Church is a relief to this worldly opposition. There have been times when the Name of God has been insulted through this evil pleasure of the wicked in the shame that the sin and lailure of his people have brought upon his cause. Here is a motive for preserving the sanctity of the Christian Church. The loss of it will not merely involve suffering to the Church herself ; it will encourage the foes of Christ by giving xhem the elation of victory, and it will dishonour his Name by making his work appear to fail.
in. The triumph of the fob over a soul. There are spiritual enemies watching for every slip that a soul may make, enemies that are confounded by its growing purity and faithfulness, but rendered insolent and jubilant by its fall. Whenever we sin we afford a triumph to the evil one. We think that we are pleasing ourselves. But there must be some mistake or our sin would not give so much satisfaction to our enemy. The laugh of Mephistopheles should have been a warning to Faust. Perhaps the most stinging smart of future retribution will be the devilish glee with which the miserable lost soul will be welcomed into the place of darkness.