Jeremiah 17

17:1 THE sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars; whilst their children remember their altars and their Asherim by the green trees upon the high hills. O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures for a spoil, and thy high places, because of sin, throughout all thy borders. And thou, even of thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger which shall burn for ever.

5. Thus saith the LORD: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out his roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. As the partridge that gathereth young which she hath not brought forth, so is he that getteth riches, and not by right; in the midst of his days they shall leave him, and at his end he shall be a fool.

12. A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary. O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed; they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters. Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise. Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the LORD? let it come now. As for me, I have not hastened from being a shepherd after thee; neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was before thy face. Be not a terror unto me: thou art my refuge in the day of evil. Let them be ashamed that persecute me, but let not me be ashamed; let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

19. Thus saith the LORD unto me: Go, and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem; and say unto them, Hear ye the word of the LORD, ye kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates; thus saith the LORD: Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem; neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work: but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers; but they hearkened not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, and might not receive instruction. And it shall come to pass, if ye diligently hearken unto me, saith the LORD, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but to hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work therein; then shall there enter in by the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever. And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places round about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the lowland, and from the mountains, and from the South, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and oblations, and frankincense, and bringing sacrifices of thanksgiving, unto the house of the LORD. But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden and enter in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.

Chap. 17. As indicated in remarks introductory to chap. 16, the first eighteen verses of this chapter may be considered as a continuation of the same message. The thought turns on the depth and strength of the national sin (verses 1, 2); the exterminating judgments that must ensue (verses 3, 4); the comparative results of trusting in man and trusting in God (verses 5-8); the treachery of the heart, the instability of riches, the scoffs of the wicked against the prophet’s messages, and his consequent prayer. H. C.

In this chapter the prophet describes in the first four verses the attachment of Judah to idolatry, and foretells the fatal consequences. He contrasteth the accursed condition of him who resteth his trust on man with the blessedness of one that trusteth in God, and illustrates both by apt comparisons (verses 5-8). He showeth that, be the human heart ever so wily, God can detect, and will finally punish its double dealing (verses 9-11). He acknowledgeth that sure salvation cometh from God, and from Him only (verses 12-14). And, complaining of those that scoffed at his predictions, he prayed for the Divine countenance and support against them (verses 15-18).

The remaining part of the chapter is taken up with a distinct prophecy relative to the strict observance of the Sabbath day, which the prophet was sent—most probably immediately after the delivery of the foregoing—to proclaim aloud, in all the gates of Jerusalem, as a matter which concerned the conduct of every individual, and the general happiness of the whole.

1. With a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond.** This is spoken metaphorically, and is meant to denote that idolatry was indelibly fixed in their affections and memory, as much as if it had been engraved with instruments capable of making the strongest and most durable impression, upon their hearts as upon a writing tablet, and upon their altars so as to be forever present before their eyes. (Cf. De. 11: 18-20; Prov. 3: 3; 7: 3.) Blayney.

1,2. The sin of Judah, and especially her sin of idolatry, is deep in her heart; as the memory (i.e., love) of children do they love their altars, groves, etc. In this construction verse 2 amplifies and illustrates the thought of verse 1, by comparing Judah’s love of idols to the love felt for children in parental bosoms. As parents love their children with an enduring love, that no perverseness can eradicate and no coldness or ingratitude can quench, so do this people love their idol altars and groves. H. C.

Sin leaves a record of itself. It is not an isolated act. It begets consequences, plants memories, creates guilt. The record remains even if we do not read it. God still notes it, and will some day confront us with it. Hence it is not enough to amend our ways for the future. We need to have past transgressions blotted out if we are to be restored to peace with God. Adeney.

That we do not see the evil of our life proves one of two things—either that there is no evil to see or that we are spiritually blind and cannot see the evil which there is. Now, spiritual blindness has for its usual concomitant spiritual pride; and the man spiritually blind is the very last who will admit that he is so. If we are left to ourselves we shall never discover the original cause and fountain of all our troubles; something outside of ourselves must come in and lead to an altered view of the purposes and possibilities of life. Y.

3. “O my mountain, I will give thy substance in the field,” etc. Nations and princes of great power and eminence are figuratively called “mountains,” in regard to their strength and elevation. (See chap. 51: 25; Isa. 41: 15; Zech. 4: 7.) Judah is therefore styled God’s mountain, as having been chosen by Him, and thereby raised to a degree of elevation above all other people. Blayney.

5-8. Trust: human and Divine.** The prophet here presents before us a vivid contrast between two types of human character. He does this by the use of suggestive images drawn from the realm of nature, as one accustomed to see the great lessons of man’s moral life and destiny reflected in visible forms in the sandy desert and sterile places of the wilderness, and in the fertile valleys and woody banks of the flowing river. The imagery is peculiarly Oriental. We can all appreciate it in some measure, but those who have seen the scanty, stunted vegetable growths of the desert side by side with the rich foliage that clothes the moist ravines and the borders of the water-courses, can best understand the exquisite truth and fitness of the analogies. W.

5,6. The Hebrew language, having three distinct words for man, has the advantage of our English in the finer shades of a passage like this: “Cursed is the man” (the strong man) “who trusteth in man” (frail man of the earth), “who maketh flesh” (mere weakness as opposed to spirit) “his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord”—in the sense of forsaking His service and worship, and hence of necessity ceasing to trust in God as his strength. The heath in the desert, according to our English version, would be a shrub which might possibly live in the desert under favorable circumstances. The picture is of one who is cut off from all earthly good, from friends, society, helpers in trouble, everything that gives comfort to man or joy to human life. The sentiment is good for all time and for all circumstances; for every individual, everywhere and always. The moment we accept the truth of God’s universal providence and take in the precious views of it given by our Divine Lord (Matt. 6: 25-34), as shown in God’s care for the fowls of heaven and the lilies and grass of the field, we shall see the fitness of “casting all our care upon Him because He careth for us,” and because His care is infinitely more and better than our own. H. C.

The sin here condemned is trusting in man, putting that confidence in the wisdom and power, the kindness and faithfulness of men, which should be placed in those attributes of God only; making our applications to men, and raising our expectations from them as principal agents, whereas they are but instruments in the hand of Providence. It is making flesh the arm we stay upon, the arm we work with, and with which we hope to work our point; the arm under which we shelter ourselves, and on which we depend for protection. God is His people’s arm (Isa. 33: 2). We must not think to make any creature to be that to us which God has undertaken to be. H.

To “make flesh one’s arm” is suggestive of personal reliance on merely human and earthly resources, in neglect of the spiritual and Divine. It takes the form of undue self-confidence—confidence in one’s own wisdom and strength, or confidence in our fellow-creatures, who are as ignorant and weak and fallible as ourselves, or confidence in that which is outward and circumstantial—worldly riches, sensible gratifications, material guarantees. Such a trust is false and delusive. It has no sure foundation. It seeks life in the region of death. As the plant finds nothing to nourish it in the barren sand, so man can never draw the nutriment his being needs from mere human and earthly resources. W.

7,8. In beautiful antithesis stands the case of him who trusteth in the Lord. He is blessed. He is an Oriental tree whose roots find living water on the river bank, and which has no occasion for anxiety in the year of drought. In this passage the author’s mind is manifestly on that beautiful description (Ps. 1: 3) which paints the blessedness of the good man. His heart always green and verdant, his life always bearing the fruits of holiness, he is a living witness to the riches of grace and to the wealth of resources for essential victory over sin which lie stored in the bosom of our

God, ever flowing out to fill the hungry, humble, trusting souls of His people. H. C.

In the first psalm the righteous man stands like a graceful tree before an ornamented gateway to an Oriental garden. “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” In these words of Jeremiah this comparison is drawn out with still greater minuteness: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh; but her leaf shall be green, and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” In those Egyptian deserts on the banks of the Nile the traveller may see the very living picture that the prophet and poet may have had in his own mind. He may see trees apparently growing out of the hot, glistening, scorching sand banks, in which half their trunks are already buried, but all verdant at the top with thick, luxuriant foliage, where not even the spiky shrubs of the wilderness can grow beneath. It is because they are so deeply rooted now, where they sprang at first, in the nourishing soil of the bed of the river, and no upper external changes of sand, or heat, or drought can affect them short of a complete submerging by a deluge of the desert. Such is the delightful image of a Christian, whose trust is in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. Such is the perpetual and joyful verdure and fruitfulness of a soul that is rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. Cheever.

The man “who trusts in the Lord” is planted in the best soil for perfect growth. His leaves are bathed in the air that is most healthful and invigorating. The sun rises upon him and sifts its gentle beams down through all his being. He dwells in a land as different from that of the man whose heart departeth from the Lord—as different as the green valley through whose bosom flows a crystal stream is from the blazing sky and burning sand of the desert. The living water flowing in glad refreshment to the believer from Christ’s love, the rich soil of the Word contributing its nourishment and the blessed light of hope lending its inspiration, the man grows to his true proportions and rises to his high and noble destiny. There in his daily life is the beauty of holiness. There the precious fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness. There are the beneficent graces that shine out to the view. And this ever-fresh life and fruitfulness the blasting heat of adversity and of temptation cannot destroy. The refreshing waters are abundant, and through faith they carry life to the thirsty soul. In all the fiery trials that come, amid all the adverse influences that surround it, the life still shows in beauty, and the character grows in enduring strength.

One of the grand duties in the service required of the Christian here below is just to stand in the place where God has planted him and grow up in the beauty of holiness and yield the fruits of the Spirit. The Christian who mourns a lack of ability and opportunity, and who seems to himself to be doing nothing for his Lord, may see here how greatly he mistakes his calling. To live Christ, to show the power of faith and the practical working of Christian truth in himself; to show the beauty of the Christian spirit and the sweetness of its temper and the nobleness of its character—this is the chief way to glorify God and advance His kingdom in the world. To just grow up before men as a tree by living waters, flourishing in the grand proportions of a Christian manhood, this is the most effective contribution to the redemption of the world. Men seeing your good works will glorify your Father in heaven. And so let every Christian abide in faith by the living waters, drink of them continually, and lift his head forever in the sunshine of the loving-kindness of the Lord. Interior.

He is the strong man who trusts in Jehovah, and he is strong just as far as he does trust. Notice how the requirement of trust is expressed twice over, first by a verb and then by a noun, both of which have the same root letters. It is as if we first saw the man in the active exercise of trust, and then the habitual confidence of his nature. We see the man trusting and we also see the trusting man. “All things are possible to him that believeth.” When God speaks, the trustful hearer readily acts upon the strength of God meaning what He says. The statements of the Gospel transcend human powers of discovery, and they can only be believed because God makes them—He whose regular and beneficent ways in nature prove Him to be so true. Man by faith puts himself in the hands of God, his Maker, and then he can do things far beyond what he has hitherto imagined to be practicable. Y.

Not careful in drought. We have always or we can always get strength enough to bear the evil when it comes. We have not strength to bear the foreboding of it. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” In strict proportion to the God-appointed existing exigency will be the God-given power. But if we crowd both the sorrows of to-day, which we actually feel, and those of to-morrow which we anticipate, into the narrow room of four-and-twenty hours, there is no promise that our strength will be as that day. God gives us power to bear all the sorrows and cares of His making; but He does not bind Himself to give us power to bear those which we manufacture with perverse industry for ourselves by being “over-exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain evils.” The Lord would teach us that the exercise of that anxious care, which is the misuse of the great faculty of looking forward and picturing things to come, is contrary to nature, revelation and providence; that it weakens and distracts; that it takes the sunshine out of every landscape and flings a shadow over all good. Surely God gave us that wonderful faculty for better purposes than that we might by it torment ourselves, and suffer every evil twice over. Why should we exercise our power of imagining the future chiefly in regard to to-morrow’s possible evils, when we might by its aid fill the winter of our earthly life with the glorious summer of eternity, and bring assurance of things hoped for to lighten the dark present? We cannot but look forward; but we may choose whether we shall look but a little way ahead on the low level, or beyond and above all the trifles at hand to “that one far-off Divine event to which the whole creation moves.” A. M.

9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can know it?** The plain sense of this verse is, that the heart is more deceitful than any other known thing, and is sick unto death—a case to be despaired of—so deceitful and so bad that the world may be challenged to fathom and search it all out. “Who can know it” to the bottom? There is no word in Hebrew corresponding to our English word “wicked.” Hopelessly, irrecoverably deceitful so far as human relief goes, seems to be the sense of the original. There is reason for the suggestion that the prophet had the case of King Jehoiakim specially in mind here, as also in verses 6, 7. But his form of statement is general and applies to the deep and subtle depravity of the unrenewed heart in all men. H. C.

The heart calls evil good, and good evil; puts false colors upon things, and cries peace to those to whom peace does not belong. When men say in their hearts, suffer their hearts to whisper to them, that either there is no God, or He does not see, or He will not require, or they shall have peace, though they go on; in these and a thousand similar suggestions the heart is deceitful; it cheats men into their own ruin; and this will be the aggravation of it, that they are self-deceivers, self-destroyers. Herein the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is desperate. The case is bad indeed, and in a manner past relief if the conscience, which should rectify the errors of the other faculties, is itself a mother of falsehood and a ringleader in the delusion. What will become of a man if that in him which should be the candle of the Lord give a false light—if God’s deputy in the soul that is intrusted to support His interests betrays them? Such is the deceitfulness of the heart, that we may truly say, “Who can know it?” Who can describe how bad the heart is? We cannot know our own hearts, not what they will do in an hour of temptation (Hezekiah did not, Peter did not), nor what corrupt dispositions there are in them, nor in how many things they have turned aside; who can understand his errors? Much less can we know the hearts of others, or have any dependence upon them. II.

In the heart we find the true man. The outer life is but the clothing, and may be the mask of the man. From the heart spring all the actions of life. The character of the fountain determines that of the stream. The root of the evil of the heart is self-will. It is rugged above all things, proud, not compliant with God’s will, wrapped up in self. The character of the evil of the heart is desperate sickness, for sin is a disease of the soul, though one for which we are responsible, and it results in suffering, general derangement of life, and finally death. The evil of the heart is inscrutable to man. “Who can know it?” This is the case, because we cannot read the hearts of our fellow-men, but only judge from external conduct, which is often deceptive; because we are blinded to our own sin by pride, prejudice and self-admiration; because there is an intricacy and subtlety about all wickedness which makes it difficult to trace it out, a shamefacedness that seeks concealment, and an essential falseness that belies its own nature; and because the disease has made so great progress, has penetrated so deeply, ramified so far, and infected every function of the soul so completely that it is beyond all measure. Adeney.

Notice in particular that it is by the heart that the heart is to be known. Heart knowledge is not like other kinds of knowledge; it depends on the character of him who knows. There is no essential contradiction between high intellectual acquirements and a hard, selfish and perhaps even, in some instances, a profligate life. Men of refined tastes and great intellectual sensibilities may be thoroughly selfish, careless about the toil and suffering of the world, so long as these plant no thorn in their pillows, infuse no bitterness into their cup. But one who would know the heart must be very sure of his own motives, otherwise he may make human nature to appear better in some respects and worse in others than it really is. The description here may, therefore, be taken as applying even more forcibly to the heart that knows than to the heart that is to be known. Here the great difficulty and danger lie. For the deceitful and corrupt heart can be known, if not by any one else, at all events by Jehovah Himself. But the deceitful and corrupt heart cannot know; it does not, in the fullest sense of the word, know anything at all. With hearts put right, what a wonderful increase of knowledge and of the profit and pleasure of knowledge will there be! But till then we are not unlike those who suffer from diseased intellects. Y.

There is a secret disposition in the heart of all to all sin; temptation doth not fall on us as a ball of fire on ice or snow, but as a spark on tinder, or lightning on a thatched roof, which presently is on a flame. Hence in Scripture, though tempted by Satan, yet the sin is charged on us, “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed.” Mark! ’tis Satan tempts, but our own lust draws us. The fowler lays the shrap, but the bird’s own desire betrays it into the net. Gurnall.

When the tenderness of the soul is lost, and its first awe of God and religion broke by a bold sin, it grows venturous, and ready to throw itself upon all sorts of outrages and enormities. It does not demur and tremble as it used to do, when anything gross and foul was proposed to it; but it closes with it readily, and steps undauntedly into that stream that is like to carry away and swallow it up forever. This growing, encroaching mischief perhaps first fastens but upon the thoughts, and they take the liberty to settle upon some unlawful base thing, like flies upon a carcass; from these it advances a step farther, and seizes the desires, which presently are carried out with a restless eagerness after the same vile object; and these at length meet with some friendly opportunity, by the help of which they break forth into actual commission; which actual commission grows from one into many, and comes to be frequent and repeated, till it settles into a custom and fixes itself immovably and forever in a man’s behavior. South.

When once a man has done a wrong thing it has an awful power of attracting him and making him hunger to do it again. Every evil that I do may, indeed, for a moment create in me a revulsion of conscience, but stronger than that revulsion of conscience it exercises a fascination over me which it is hard to resist. It is a great deal easier to find a man that has never done a wrong thing than to find a man that has only done it once. If the wall of the dyke is sound it will keep the water out, but if there is the tiniest hole in it, it will all come in. So the evil that you do asserts its power over you, it has a fierce, longing desire after you, and it gets you into its clutches. Beware of the first evils, for as sure as you are living, the first step taken will make the second seem to become necessary. The first drop will be followed by a bigger second, and the second, at a shorter interval, by a more copious third, until the drops become a shower, and shower becomes a deluge. The course of evil is ever wider and deeper, and more tumultuous. The little sins get in at the window and open the front door for the big housebreakers. One smooths the path for the other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing itself. As the prophet says in his awful vision of the doleful creatures that make their sport in the desolate city, “None of them shall want her mate. The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wild beasts of the islands.” Every sin tells upon character, and makes the repetition of itself more and more easy. “None is barren among them.” And all sin is linked together in a slimy tangle, like a field of seaweed, so that the man once caught in its oozy fingers is almost sure to drown. A. M.

Great criminals struggle toward not against their crime. They buffet with opposing waves to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it. This man went on knowingly, with infinite endurance, pains and perseverance to his deed of guilt. Dickens.

It is not that the world does not abound with manifestations of moral as well as of physical beauty. It is not that many fair and admirable impulses and principles of action are not every day witnessed by men; that the family relation, that the larger social relations, have not their virtues respected and honored among us. This is not what the Bible asserts when it speaks of the heart of man as utterly depraved, of the world as a moral ruin. What it does assert is this—that all which is excellent in the natural man is excellent irrespectively of his God; that he loves, hates, prefers, rejects—and often rightly too—but without any thought of God’s laws of preference and rejection; that thus all—and there is much—that is beautiful in his best impulses is beautiful only as the flower or the landscape is beautiful; his heart as little moving through its circle of social kindness from a desire to approve itself to the God who has commanded them, as the flower expands its petals and sheds its fragrance in voluntary obedience to Him who created it—the one beauty being as much and as little religious as the other. If every motive must be comparatively worthless for the activities of eternity but that which connects us directly with our God; if with the earthly framework the earthly impulses shall in death be dissipated, and the immortal spirit be left to those alone which can stand the fiery test of God’s tremendous presence, then no virtue but godliness, no excellence but that which springs from God, no affection but that which tends to God, no rule of life but that which God has sanctioned and which trains for God, can ever be the virtue, or the excellence, or the affection, or the rule, which is fitted for a creature travelling hourly on through time to God’s own eternity. W. A. B.

To put the question concerning the natural depravity of man to the severest test; take the best of the human species, the watchful, diligent, self-denying Christian, and let him decide the controversy; and that, not by inferences drawn from the practices of a thoughtless and dissolute world, but by an appeal to his personal experience. Go with him into his closet, ask him his opinion of the corruption of the heart, and he will tell you that he is deeply sensible of its power, for that he has learned it from much self-observation and long acquaintance with the workings of his own mind. He will tell you that every day strengthens this conviction; yea, that hourly he sees fresh reason to deplore his want of simplicity in intention, his infirmity of purpose, his low views, his selfish, unworthy desires, his backwardness to set about his duty, his languor and coldness in performing it; that he finds himself obliged continually to confess that he feels within him two opposite principles, and that he cannot do the things that he would. He cries out in the language of the excellent Hooker, “The little fruit which we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and unsound; we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the world for it, we dare not call God to reckoning as if we had Him in our debt books; our continual suit to Him is, and must be, to bear with our infirmities, and pardon our offences!” Wilberforce.

10. “I the Lord search the heart; I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” With great beauty and force we are taught here that what man cannot search out God can. It is His prerogative to search and to know the inmost heart of man. Nothing can ever be hidden from his piercing eye. Nor does He search and know men’s hearts for purposes of idle curiosity, or for the mere information itself, but for the far higher and more practical purpose of awarding retribution to men according to their ways. The connection shows plainly that men’s ways are here supposed to be estimated according to the purpose and intent of their heart. Their “ways,” in the sense of external life, could not be judged righteously save by one who perfectly knows the heart. So the Lord judges not alone by what human eyes can see, as it is written (1 Sam. 16: 7), “The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart;” or (as 1 K. 8: 39), “Give thou to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men.” H. C.

“I the Lord search the heart.” This is true of all that is in the heart; all the thoughts of it, the quickest and those that are most carelessly overlooked by ourselves; all the intents of it, the closest, and those that are most artfully disguised and industriously concealed from others. Men may be imposed upon, but God cannot. He not only searches the heart with a piercing eye, but He tries the reins to pass a judgment upon what He discovers, to give everything its true character and due weight. He tries, as the gold is tried, whether it be standard or no; as the prisoner is tried, whether he be guilty or no. And this judgment which He makes of the heart is in order to His passing judgment upon the man; it is to give to every man according to his ways, according to the desert and tendency of them; life to those that walked in the ways of life, and death to those that persisted in the paths of the destroyer; and according to the fruit of his doings, the effect and influence his doings have had upon others; or, according to what is settled by the word of God to be the fruit of men’s doings, blessings to the obedient, and curses to the disobedient. Therefore God is Judge Himself, and He alone, because He and none besides knows the hearts of the children of men. It is true especially of all the deceitfulness and wickedness of the heart; all its corrupt devices, desires and designs God observes and discerns; and (which is more than any man can do) He judges of the overt act by the heart. God knows more evil of us than we do by ourselves; which is a good reason why we should not flatter ourselves, but always stand in awe of the judgment of God. H.

God knows us in all our motives, through all our concealments, and can set our secret sins—the operation of destroying causes that lie even below our consciousness—in the light of His countenance. When once we discover how competent God is to search and try, we shall then see that it is vain for us to deny what He affirms, to excuse what He condemns, and to make out that we are not responsible when He lays evil at our doors. Y.

We may often think very well of ourselves, when, in fact, our hidden life is pining away and dying; or we may be unhappy and distressed about ourselves when it is really growing daily stronger and more lasting; but it is not hidden from the eyes of God. He sees it more than He sees anything else in us. We see all the unrealities; our eyes see shadows and fancies much better than substances—they see all the worldly, earthly, temporary, unreal things; but God sees the true, substantial, eternal things. His eye is on our souls; He sees thoughts; He sees the hidden life, its progress, its healthiness, its growth and strength. He alone knows by whom and how far the life that He gave (the life that He is) is cherished, prized, fed and strengthened by prayer and holy obedience, or checked, blighted and languishing by careless cultivation and neglect. Bp. Moberly.

11. The covetous man, says Dahler, who heaps up riches by unjust ways, is compared to a bird which hatches the eggs of other fowls. And as the young when hatched, and able at all to shift for themselves, abandon her who is not their mother, and leave her nothing to compensate her trouble; so the covetous man loses those unjustly gotten treasures, and the fruit of his labor.

And at his end shall be a fool. Shall be reputed as such. He was a fool all the way through; he lost his soul to get wealth, and this wealth he never enjoyed. A. C.—He was a fool all along; sometimes perhaps his own conscience told him so, but at his end he will appear to be so. Those are fools indeed who are fools in their latter end; and such multitudes will prove who were cried up as wise men that did well for themselves (Ps. 49 : 13, 18). They that get grace will be wise in their latter end, will have the comfort of it in death and the benefit of it to eternity (Prov. 19 : 20); but they that place their happiness in the wealth of the world, and, right or wrong, will be rich, will rue the folly of it when it is too late to rectify the fatal mistake. This is like the partridge that sits on eggs and hatches them not, but they are broken (as Job 39 : 15), or stolen (as Isa. 10 : 14), or they become addle: some sort of fowl there was well known among the Jews, whose case this commonly was. The rich man takes a great deal of pains to get an estate together, and sits brooding upon it, but never has any comfort or satisfaction in it; his projects to enrich himself by sinful courses miscarry and come to nothing. Let us therefore be wise in time; what we get to get it honestly; and what we have to use it charitably; that we may lay up in store a good foundation, and be wise for eternity. H.

Money honestly earned by useful labor of muscle or brain, money honestly made by skill or industry that creates or increases values, is a good and useful thing. Honestly gained and worthily used—used conscientiously, benevolently, devoutly—it is a means of grace and of blessing. But our Lord spoke of the “deceitfulness of riches.” Solemnly He warned His disciples to “beware of covetousness.” The word thus rendered forcibly expresses the passion for accumulation. It is not the diligent earning of money for good and generous uses, but the getting in order to keep and accumulate. Upon no desire of the human mind can the devil operate more successfully to persuade men to try his methods. He has made multitudes believe that his methods of doing business are the only methods that are “practical” or can succeed. Believe that and adopt his methods, calling them “laws of trade” or by any other handsome name, and you are selling yourself to the devil. H. A. Nelson.

Many are the personal temptations always accompanying wealth — temptation to make financial possessions the standard of worth, and to look down on those who are less fortunate as inferiors; temptation to make a selfish and tyrannous use of power (a temptation as great in the commercial world as in the military and governmental); temptation to use wealth for the gratification of appetite and passion and caprice, prostituting opportunity to purposes of dissipation or idleness; and temptation, above all, to one who sees the constant obsequiousness of those who seek his aid, to “purse-proud haughtiness, that worst sort of pride, because it puts money above manhood, forgetting that a man is really rich or poor, according to what he is, and not according to what he has.” Instead of blaming rich men for not being better, I sometimes wonder, considering how they are beset, that they are as good as they are. For all these reasons, it requires extraordinary grace and force of character to be a rich man, and yet to be a good man. A. J. Brown.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that we are to use the world as not abusing it, and so as not to let it abuse us. Really, what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul! Wealth is a means, not an end. Happy is that man who, owning houses and lands, mills and railways, stocks and bonds, is yet bigger than all these, using them and forbidding them to use him, remembering his God, his Church, his country and his kind, and so utilizing the opportunities of earth to lay up treasure in heaven. This universe is the richer in all ways for every such man. God, multiply them! But equally to be commended is the poor man who is not overcome by the world; who does not envy the rich, or waste his existence in struggling to ape them, or rave at God and society because his lot is what it is, or shut his mind to that blessedness which is higher than what Mammon can bestow. I never chide the laboring classes for their unrest. Much of it is from God. It is the glory and hope of our age that the common man is at last astir and active and must be heeded. Nor are men to blame for wanting more of the world’s valuables. The appetite for gain in itself is no part of our depravity; and the time is coming when, in case of each honest man, it will be gratified. What is sad is that so many of us ignore the true, ultimate meaning of righteous unrest and of righteous desire for gain. Walk with God, get character, faith, life—something to spur good discontent, and good love of possession, and guide them to worthy ends; making one think it of slight moment after all whether he personally owns little or much, so he only lives and acts well; this is the message of Jesus; this is the Gospel for our time. E. B. Andrews.

12-18. Here, as often before, we have the prophet retired for private meditation, and alone with God. Those ministers that would have comfort in their work must be much so. In his converse here with God and his own heart he takes the liberty, which devout souls sometimes use in their soliloquies, to pass from one thing to another, without tying themselves too strictly to the laws of method and coherence. H.

12. The prophet thinks of God as symbolically enthroned in His earthly temple, “the place of our sanctuary,” yet really as filling His eternal throne in the highest heavens. H. C. —As in the preceding verses was set forth the vain dependence of him who seeks to advance himself by indirect methods, so here we are taught the solid foundation which he builds upon who has recourse to the Divine blessing, and seeks to recommend himself to the favor of that Being to whom Israel was taught to look up for support, and whose kingdom from all eternity ruleth over all. Blayney.

13. “Ashamed” as usual in the sense of confounded, put to confusion by being utterly disappointed and baffled in every purpose and hope. They that depart from me (God) shall be written in the dust, the sand, with only a perishable record of fame, because they have forsaken the Lord. The allusion to “the fountain,” etc., carries our thoughts to chap. 2 : 13 : “They have forsaken” Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water. H. C.

Though not stated in so many words, it is cheerfully implied that those cleaving to God have their names written whence they can never be erased. For their names are indeed written, as it were, on the heart of God Himself. He cannot either forget or forsake them. They are ever remembered in the wisdom of His thoughts and the resistless movements of His ways. The best thing that can happen to us in purely human relations is to be written in the hearts of those who love us ; when they remember us, not because it is their interest to do so, but out of an unselfish fulness of desire for our welfare and happiness. But how much better is it to be thus remembered by God, seeing that with Him there abides a love inexpressibly deeper than any human affection, and, along with this love, a wisdom and power with which even the highest human wisdom and power are not for a moment to be mentioned !

15. The lesson is plain : do not reject truth, or in any wise try to evade it because it comes through some one you do not like. What Jeremiah said here, respecting the character and work of these men, was true ; and they do not deny the truth. They simply ignore the charges, and by one scornful question hint that the threatenings connected with the charges are but as empty words.

16-18. The prophet’s consciousness of integrity. We may take it that this one question (verse 15), “Where is the word of Jehovah ?” stands for a great deal in the way of taunt. The appeal to God, with which the prophet follows up the mention of this question, shows how much he felt the attacks made upon him. It would be too much to say that he did not expostulate with his enemies upon their injustice ; but evidently his great resort was to the God who had sent him. If men perversely attributed to him daring imposture and bitter malignity, he could do nothing but fall back on God’s knowledge of his course and motives. Y.

16. This verse is a twofold vindication of himself ; on the one hand, as toward God, and on the other, as toward the people. On the side toward God he says he has not torn himself away from the work of a prophet, has not refused to follow the manifest will of God in his pastoral work ; and on the side toward the people, he had not desired their punishment.

18. The prophet’s sympathies are entirely with God, and with righteousness and truth against wickedness, and against those who in this case represented wickedness and had identified themselves with it. Hence these utterances. The issue is fully made between them and me—them, as Thine enemies and mine ; me, as Thy prophet, as the messenger of Thy fearful words of judgment. Now, therefore, let them be confounded and dismayed, and not me. Break them with a double breaking for their shocking blasphemy in which they defy Almighty God ! So ends this particular message, full of sharp, searching, solemn truth, indicating plainly that, as between the people on the one hand, and the prophet and his Divine Master on the other, matters were hastening to their crisis.

19-27. The remaining portion of this chapter enjoins the sacred observance of the Sabbath, and makes large promises on condition of obedience. Obviously obedience, in this case, is understood to imply obedience in other duties, and the spirit of obedience generally ; else such promises could not attach to it. Besides, it is simply impossible that there can ever be the spirit of obedience in any one thing, and not the general spirit of obedience as to all known duty. The prophet is to proclaim this message specially in the one gate through which the king went in and out, and then in all the gates of the city, as being the place of public resort where people “most did congregate.” H. C.

21. From this and the following verses we find the ruin of the Jews attributed to the breach of the Sabbath; as this led to a neglect of sacrifice, the ordinances of religion and all public worship, so it necessarily brought with it all immorality. The breach of the Sabbath was that which let in upon them all the waters of God’s wrath. A. C.

The meaning of the Sabbath is to be known from the Old Testament alone. The chief passages relating to it are Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:11; 31:13-17, the essential matter of which is as follows: God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh, and therefore blessed and hallowed this day, on which His work was complete. Hence the people whom He has consecrated to Himself, and who acknowledge the Creator and Lord of the world as their God, are also to hallow the seventh day as a day of rest after every six days’ labor in the works of their calling, and this is to be a sign of the covenant between God and His people. These propositions contain the following thoughts: 1. Man, like God, is to work and to rest; thus human life is to be a copy of Divine life. But especially must the people who are called to be the instrument of restoring the Divine order in earthly life be seen to be the peculiar possession of the living God, by an alternation of work and rest corresponding with the rhythm of the Divine life. 2. Divine labor terminates in happy rest; not till the Creator rests satisfied in the contemplation of His works is His creation itself complete. So, too, human labor is not to run on in resultless circles, but to terminate in a happy harmony of existence. The idea of the Sabbath, however, extends farther. That the whole course of human history is not to run on in dreary endlessness; that its events are to have a positive termination; are to find a completion in an harmonious and God-given order—is already guaranteed by the Sabbath of creation and prefigured by the sabbatical seasons. The Divine rest of the seventh day of creation, which has no evening, hovers over the world’s progress, that it may at last absorb it into itself. It is upon the very fact that the rest of God is also to be a rest for man, and that God has declared this by the institution of the Sabbath, that Heb. 4 founds a proof for the proposition: “There remaineth a rest for the people of God.” Oehler.

We regard the Sabbath festival as ante-legal—in other words, as an institution of Paradise. The institution received its legal character for the first time in connection with the giving of the law at Sinai, and lost it again through the love which, in the New Testament, is the fulfilment of the law; but the institution of the Sabbath continued to exist after the law was fulfilled, as it had already existed before the law was given, and it is destined to continue until it has attained to its fulfilment and completion in the eternal Sabbath of the creature. Kurtz.

From the very beginning God has seen fit to appoint outward types and emblems of spiritual things and rites of worship. From the beginning one day in seven has been set apart and consecrated to religion. And we know that under the patriarchal and mosaic dispensations there were recognized sanctuaries, places dedicated to worship, where men put off the shoes from their feet because it was holy ground. And as to the teachings of the New Testament we know that our Saviour honored the Sabbath, that He attended the synagogue and took part in its services; and that on two memorable occasions He drove the merchants and money-changers out of the temple which they profaned.

If religion is to exist in the world as a spiritual force, it must manifest itself in some outward shape. It must have some local habitation and be incarnated in some visible form. The Gospel of the secular life ignores man’s material nature and environment. It is a hyper-spiritualism. It would make us all Quakers. Undoubtedly it is true that the strongest bias of our nature is toward the outward and the material. There is a temptation to put holy water and consecrated oil in place of the spirit; to make the kingdom of God consist in meats and drinks instead of righteousness; and we need to be often reminded that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and contrite heart. But if there is danger in the direction of ritualism, there is danger also in the direction of Quakerism and mysticism. In this matter the via media is the true and safe way. God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, but He is to be worshipped; and all sincere worship will find outward expression. It will clothe itself in articulate forms. It will not disdain the use of those means of grace which devout souls have always found helpful. A religion that never goes to church and that contributes nothing to the support of the Gospel may be a very refined and ethereal sort of religion, but it can hardly thrive in this world. It is doubtful whether it will even do its possessor much good, and certainly his light will not shine upon the path of others. The

time may come when holiness to the Lord shall be written upon the bells of the horses and there shall be no distinction between sacred and profane, because the earth shall be filled with righteousness and with the glory

of the Lord. But that day seems far off. We still need our Sabbaths and our sanctuaries, our sacred places and seasons. They are not religion, but they are helps toward it. Interior.