1. Jeremiah's ministry was a lifelong martyrdom. It was in its nature a burden that might well have crushed the strongest spirit. Not only was he compelled to stand almost alone against the whole nation; but he was actually the object of bitter persecution; his very life was constantly in danger. His neighbours at Anathoth sought to murder him. They “devised devices” against him, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.” His own family raised the hue and cry after him, and could not be trusted. “Denounce, and we will denounce him, say all my familiar friends, they that watch for my halting; peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him.” The priest who was the chief officer of the Temple thrust him in the stocks for profaning (as he thought) the Temple court with his forebodings of evil. The popular prophets were in constant opposition to him, both in Jerusalem and in Babylon, endeavouring, only too successfully, to neutralize his message with their flattering falsehoods. Not even when he solemnly predicted the death of Hananiah, and his prediction came to pass within two months, nor when he declared that Ahab and Zedekiah, who were not only false prophets, but also immoral men, would suffer the horrible Babylonian punishment of being burnt alive, did the people believe him.
At the time of the final siege of Jerusalem at the close of Zedekiah's reign, Jeremiah's philo-Babylonian policy was regarded as highly dangerous and rendered him liable to suspicion. Being accused of an attempt to desert, as many had already done, to the enemy, he was imprisoned and suffered many hardships and privations, and so remained until the city was taken. And yet he was not altogether without allies and helpers. A large number must have regarded him with respect. Even the king, though in a weak and timid fashion, sought his advice and befriended him-a fact to which he owed some amelioration of his troubles, and very probably his life. When the city was taken, Jeremiah, being given by Nebuchadnezzar's orders the choice of going to Babylon or of remaining at Jerusalem, decided to place himself under the protection of Gedaliah, the newly appointed governor of the city; and after the murder of the latter by Ishmael, he was eventually carried by force, with many others, into Egypt, where his last published words were a prediction of the conquest fulfilled, however, by Cambyses. We do not know how long Jeremiah survived the capture of Jerusalem, or where or how he died. There is, however, a tradition, mentioned by Tertullian, Jerome, and others, that the men of Tahpanhes, stung by his bitter words, stoned him to death; and it has been thought that in Heb_11:37 there is an allusion to this circumstance. But, however this may be, it is in Egypt that, amid mournful surroundings of obstinate idolatry, his teaching spurned and misunderstood, his country waste and desolate, the curtain falls upon the great prophet's life in darkness and desolation.
Jeremiah has been likened to several characters in profane history-to Cassandra, the Trojan prophetess, whose fate it was never to be believed, though prophesying nothing but the truth; to Phocion, the rival of Demosthenes in the last generation of Athenian greatness, who maintained the unpopular but sound doctrine that, if Athens were to escape worse evils, she must submit peaceably to the growing power of Macedon; to Dante, whose native state, Florence, was in relation to France and the Empire as Palestine was to Egypt and Babylon, while the poet like the prophet could only protest without effect against the ever-growing dangers.1 [Note: A. W. Streane.]
2. Such was Jeremiah's extraordinary career. Never surely was there a life of such unrelieved gloom. Like Newman, in our own times, he was early convinced that it was not the will of God that he should marry. He was an ascetic: “Thou shalt not go into the house of feasting, to sit with them to eat and to drink,” was a voice he had heard from the Lord; and even from the solemn charities of burial he was equally to abstain. We are glad to find that he was the owner of a bit of land in Anathoth, and that he had a few loyal friends, especially those of the house of Shaphan. Was ever a man who loved his country placed in a position like his? Instead of cheering on his fellow-countrymen to resist the enemy by whom the city was invested, he had to advise the king in secret and the people in public to surrender; and after the fall of the city he received special marks of favour from the conqueror. What a contrast to the position of Isaiah, who, when the enemy was at the gates of Jerusalem, sustained the fainting courage of the garrison within the walls, and had his prophetic career crowned by a miracle of deliverance which he had predicted.
The visible success of a faithful preacher is no test of his acceptableness before God. There are times when the Holy Spirit Himself seems to work in vain, and the world seems given up to the powers of evil. True, even then there is a “silver lining” to the cloud, if we only have faith to see it. There is always a “remnant according to the election of grace”; and there is often a late harvest which the sower does not live to see. It was so with the labours of Jeremiah, who, like the hero Samson, slew more in his death than in his life.2 [Note: T. K. Cheyne.]
Was Jeremiah a true patriot in so continually expressing his conviction of the futility of resistance to Babylon? It must be remembered, first of all, that the religious idea with which Jeremiah was inspired is higher and broader than the idea of patriotism. Israel had a Divinely appropriated work; if it fell below its mission, what further right had it of existence? Perhaps it may be allowable to admit that such conduct as Jeremiah's would not in our day be regarded as patriotism. If the Government had fully committed itself to a definite and irrevocable policy, it is probable that all parties would agree to enforce at any rate silent acquiescence. One eminent man may, however, be appealed to in favour of Jeremiah's patriotism. Niebuhr, quoted by Sir Edward Strachey, writes thus at the period of Germany's deepest humiliation under Napoleon: “I told you, as I told every one, how indignant I felt at the senseless prating of those who talked of desperate resolves as of a tragedy.… To bear our fate with dignity and wisdom, that the yoke might be lightened, was my doctrine, and I supported it with the advice of the prophet Jeremiah, who spoke and acted very wisely, living as he did under King Zedekiah, in the times of Nebuchadnezzar, though he would have given different counsel had he lived under Judas Maccabæus, in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes.”1 [Note: T. K. Cheyne.]
3. If ever there was a loving and patriotic heart, it was Jeremiah's. At any moment he would willingly have sacrificed his life for his country; and he may be said to have died for her many deaths. No wonder he often broke down under the burden of his destiny. There do not exist in literature passages more pathetic than those in which he complains of his lot. “Oh that my head were waters,” he cries, “and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” He often wished he were out of all the strife and trouble: “Oh,” he cries, “that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them!” He felt that the part which he had to play was quite contrary to his nature: “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor have men lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.” Sometimes he resolved that he would give it all up: “Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name.” Sometimes he was so sad and dead-beaten that he wished he had never been born: “Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad.”
“The true patriot,” said Freeman, “is he who seeks the highest welfare of his country, and who holds that the real welfare of his country is inseparable from right dealing. He will be zealous for the outward glory, dignity, and interest of the nation, but only so far as they are consistent with justice and honour.” In short, he maintained that in the case of nations as of individuals, duty ought to come first and interest afterwards, though in both instances it would commonly be found that the highest interests were best secured in the end by a straightforward and fearless discharge of duty.1 [Note: W. R. W. Stephens, The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, ii. 124.]
Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart blushing whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you, that by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may prepare to ascend to Him. It is your name, your glory, your sign among the people. Give to it your thoughts, your counsels, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful, as it was foretold by our great men. And see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood or of servitude; unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one, as the thought of God.2 [Note: Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini, vi. 163.]
Mazzini was more than the Italian Patriot, though he was that pre-eminently. His patriotism was the main outcome of a very powerful, original, and various mind. Without Religion, without faith in God and the habit of regarding all Nature and the whole course of Humanity, as a manifestation of God, the World, he believed, was rotten, and life a ghastly farce. His favourite word for the opposite way of thinking, and for all mere acquiescence in customary Religion without real belief, was Materialism. This word, which he pronounced in a cutting Italian way (Matérrialism), was his constant name of reprobation for a great many men whose mental power he acknowledged. It was the counterpart, spiritually and intellectually, of Individualism and Macchiavellism in practice; and the world was full of Materialists, Individualists, Macchiavellists. The restoration of a real faith in God and His manifestation through Humanity, was the great reform necessary in every nation. All else would follow.3 [Note: D. Masson, Memories of London in the 'Forties, 196.]
