Jeremiah 2

2:1, 2 AND the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Go, and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals; how thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not 3 sown. Israel was holiness unto the LORD, the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall be held guilty; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD. 4 Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of 5 Israel: thus saith the LORD, What unrighteousness have your fathers found in me, that 6 they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt; that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a land that none passed through, and where no man 7 dwelt? And I brought you into a plentiful land, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. 8 The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the rulers also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after 9 things that do not profit. Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD, and with 10 your children’s children will I plead. For pass over to the isles of Kittim, and see; and 11 send unto Kedar, and consider diligently; and see if there hath been such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? but my people have changed their glory 12 for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, 13 be ye very desolate, saith the LORD. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that 14 can hold no water. Is Israel a servant? is he a homeborn slave? why is he become a prey? 15 The young lions have roared upon him, and yelled: and they have made his land waste; his 16 cities are burned up, without inhabitant. The children also of Noph and Tahpanhes have 17 broken the crown of thy head. Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast 18 forsaken the LORD thy God, when he led thee by the way? And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Shihor? or what hast thou to do in the way to 19 Assyria, to drink the waters of the River? Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and a bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord, 20 the LORD of hosts. For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not serve; for upon every high hill and under every green tree thou didst bow 21 thyself, playing the harlot. Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how 22 then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me? For though thou wash thee with lye, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith 23 the Lord God. How canst thou say, I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing 24 her ways; a wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind in her desire; in her occasion who can turn her away? all they that seek her will not weary themselves; in her 25 month they shall find her. Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them 26 will I go. As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; 27 they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets; which say to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, 28 and save us. But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.

29. Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD.

30. In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath

31 devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion. O generation, see ye the word of the LORD.

Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? or a land of thick darkness? wherefore say my people,

32. We are broken loose; we will come no more unto thee? Can a maid forget her ornaments,

33 or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number. How trim-

34 mest thou thy way to seek love! therefore even the wicked women hast thou taught thy

35 ways. Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the innocent poor: I have not found it at the place of breaking in, but upon all these. Yet thou saidst, I am innocent;

36 surely his anger is turned away from me. Behold, I will enter into judgement with thee,

37 because thou sayest, I have not sinned. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou shalt be ashamed of Egypt also, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. From him also shalt thou go forth, with thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.

3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? But thou

2 hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD. Lift up thine eyes unto the bare heights, and see; where hast thou not been lien with? By the ways hast thou sat for them, as an Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the

3 land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; yet thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou re-

4 fusedst to be ashamed. Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the

5 guide of my youth? Will he retain his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and hast done evil things, and hast had thy way.

Chap. 2. This chapter and the first five verses of the third constitute one message. Unlike most of Jeremiah’s special messages, this stands without date. In favor of dating it among the very earliest of his prophecies, say in the thirteenth year of Josiah (1:2 and 25:3), are its location first in order in the book; the implied apostasy of the people from God, which is such as the very long and very wicked reign of Manasseh must have induced; and the adaptation of such a message from the Lord’s prophet to promote the great reformation which the good Josiah commenced in earnest but one year previously. H. C.

The prophecy begun in this chapter is continued to the end of the fifth verse of the next chapter. In it God professes to retain the same kindness and favorable disposition toward Israel which He had manifested in their earlier days. He expostulates with them on their ungrateful returns for His past goodness; and shows that it was not want of affection in Him, but their own extreme and unparalleled wickedness and disloyalty, which had already subjected and would still subject them to calamities and misery. He concludes with a pathetic address, exhorting them to return to Him, with an implied promise of acceptance. Blayney.

1-3. The Lord tacitly compares His own covenant relation to the Jews with that most tender and precious of all human relations, the marriage state. Then, with a happy allusion to the warmth of interest and affection common to the recently betrothed or wedded, he says, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thy betrothal”—i.e., the love shown by the people when they followed His leadings through that ancient wilderness of Sinai. These great truths—the nation protected while obedient, and, when disobedient, unprotected and scourged, with impunity to their chastisers—fill out the whole history of the covenant people. We may fitly note how beautifully and winningly this reference to the early love existing between the Lord and His covenant people stands at the head of the expostulations and rebukes that so largely fill this Book of Jeremiah. The Lord would have them understand how gladly He would welcome the nation back to the early warmth of their love, and no less to the eternal warmth of His! H. C.

2. Behold the similitude of marriage to the union between Christ and the Church! This latter relation, also, is that of a union based on covenant; on a mutual engagement to fidelity between the contracting parties. This sacred union has its day of espousals in the present life. The marriage to which it looks forward is to be celebrated, in solemn and royal state, on the morning of the greatest day of days. And the parties who here enter into this holy state of covenant are regarded by the Bible as already one; that is, as united in a bond which supposes a common love, which creates a common interest, and which, spiritually understood and discharged, looks forward to a common destiny. J. S. Stone.

3. God appropriated them to Himself; though they were a sinful people, yet by virtue of the covenant made with them, and the Church set up among them, they were “holiness to the Lord,” dedicated to His honor, and taken under His special tuition: they were the “first-fruits of His increase,” the first constituted Church He had in the world; they were the first-fruits, but the full harvest was to be gathered from among the Gentiles. The “first-fruits of the increase” were God’s part of it, were offered to Him, and He was honored with them; so were the people of the Jews; what little tribute, rent and homage God had from the world He had it chiefly from them; and it was their honor to be thus set apart for God. This honor have all the saints; they are the “first-fruits of His creatures” (James 1:18). H.

The spiritual plan of God in the earth is to bring men into holiness, and happiness that springs from holiness, through fellowship with His own Spirit incorporated with His Son and revealed by His Holy Ghost. For that He preserved the race after it had fallen; for that He sent prophet and seer and songster; for that He sent His Son into the world that He might make men partakers of His holiness—not of an austere and rigorous morality merely, not of sentimental holiness merely—of His holiness, sweet and tender and mighty. That He might make men partakers of that holiness Christ came into the world, and for the same end the Spirit comes, and for the same end the Church exists. R. S. S.

4-6. The fathers of the generation then living ing had begun this fearful apostasy from their God into idolatry, and now God appeals to their children to say if it were for any fault of His, and if any, for what? They, not God, had broken covenant. Could they charge any wrong upon Him? What perverse thing had He ever done to justify them in turning aside at all from the path of humble, honest obedience? What had their God done that they should turn away from Him to go after mere wind and emptiness, and become so utterly foolish? This last phrase—“walking after vanity and becoming vain”—occurs somewhat frequently. It most fitly describes the supreme folly and guilt of turning from the living God to dead idols, mere nothings, unsubstantial as a puff of air.

7-11. The same course of thought continues—the manner of address changing from the third person to the second—passing from speaking of the fathers to speaking directly to the children then living, and then addressed by the prophet in the name of the Lord. It is a remarkable, strong and clear showing in the light of reason, that His priests and people were utterly foolish and fearfully guilty. H. C.—They had with idolatry introduced all manner of wickedness. When they entered into the good land which God gave them, they defiled it by defiling themselves, and disfitting themselves for the service of God. It was God’s land; they were but tenants to Him, sojourners in it (Lev. 25:23). It was His heritage, for it was a holy land, Immanuel’s land; but they “made it an abomination” even to God Himself, who was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel. H.

12,13. The thing so revolting and so horrible in the eye of reason is that God’s people forsake Him and go after false, idol gods instead. For God is a fountain of blessings, never failing, ever pure, flowing abundantly and freely, meeting every want most perfectly, and bearing a glorious wealth of good to His people; yet they spurn this fountain and set themselves to hew out worthless cisterns that cannot hold water, whose waters are soon foul, and their supply sure to fail in the day of real need. To get the full force of this figure we may think of an Oriental, half-torrid climate on a wild, parched Arabian desert, where water is the first necessity of human existence—where half the year is rainless, and the miserable sojourners are fain to betake themselves to building cisterns as a last resort for sustaining life. Under such circumstances, no man not positively insane could be so senseless and foolish as to forsake a fresh, perennial fountain to toil over a frail, uncertain cistern. It is only in religion that men, otherwise intelligent and sensible, make themselves fools! Oh, might they only consider that it is infinitely better to come to God, the great Fountain of all good, and live in Him, than to repel His love and care, and perpetrate the folly of toiling at one’s own cistern, in the vain hope of living independently of God! Alas, that men in all ages are so slow to learn that God is a fountain of unmeasured blessedness! Taken together, these strongest terms in the language show how intensely amazed all the holy in heaven are at the monstrous folly of human sinning. That when men might have the infinite God for their Friend, they choose to have Him their enemy; that when they might have Him their exhaustless portion of unmeasured and eternal good, they spurn Him away, and set themselves to the fruitless task of making some ruinous substitute; this is beyond measure amazing! Verily, sin is a mockery of human reason! H. C.

Broken cisterns the people of Israel seem to have known only too well. Dr. Thomson says there are thousands such in Upper Galilee, which, though dug in hard rock and apparently sound, are all dry in winter; at best they are an uncertain source of supply, and the water, when collected, is bad in color and taste, and full of worms. The whole action, then, of the character here indicated is scarcely conceivable, unless as the expression of fear in a diseased mind. In somewhat of this way we have heard of men acting, who, after having made great fortunes, have become victims to the horrid delusion that they are paupers, and must make some sort of provision against utter destitution. So we might imagine the victim of delusion, with fountains all round him, still insisting upon having some sort of cistern provided. Note, moreover, that the aspect of folly becomes more decided when we consider that it is water which is treated in this way. The water which is offered so freely and continuously in the fountain is a thing which man needs, and yet it is for the supply of that which is a great and may be a painful need that he is represented as depending on broken cisterns which with great toil he has constructed for himself. P. C.

Travellers tell us that sometimes they find the path leading to the fountain of the desert strewn with the bones of those who have perished from thirst. They even find skulls, whitened and bleached, bending over the very edge of the fountain. Why? The men dying with thirst discovered that the cistern was brobroken and empty. Christ is not a broken cistern. The world is. Human philosophy is. Christ is a fountain of life full and inexhaustible. Gregg.

Although man has forsaken God, the fountain of living water, he has not given up the desire for something to satisfy the thirst of his spirit. He seeks light for the mind, love for the heart, peace for the soul; he seeks honor and glory. He is not content with existence; he wishes to live; he wants fulness of life, vigorous, joyous, long-enduring. He still wants water, though he has left God. This it is which he seeks in broken cisterns. And yet God is the only fountain of living water. Saphir.

Many are content that God should be their happiness in another world, who will not take Him as such in this. Here they have other objects of pursuit, which engross their time and captivate their affections. They want not God. Their service is for what they may get from Him, not for what they find in Him. They are ever setting up this or that vanity, idolizing the creature, and saying to it, “Thou shalt be a god to me,” while they turn away from the uncreated spring of blessedness. So God complains of His people by the prophet, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” And alas! the foolish hearts, even of His own children, are ever prone to do the same—to look elsewhere for satisfying good, and set their affections upon that which is not. Many a rod which falls heavy in the providence of God brings this message along with it, “I will be to you a God.” In this way, as well as by direct communications of Himself in goodness to the soul, winning its affections and charming it away from created good, does God teach His people to take Him as their all—their present, as well as their everlasting portion. Goode.

19. It was scarcely necessary that God should Himself reprove them. Their own sins reproved and rebuked them so manifestly that they had only to look at the case to see that their forsaking God was all wrong, bitterly and ruinously so, even against themselves. H. C.

“Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and then it is impossible to save thee; know and see therefore, upon the whole matter, that it is an evil thing that thou hast forsaken God, for that is it that makes thine enemies enemies indeed, and thy friends friends in vain.” The nature of sin is “forsaking the Lord” as our God; it is the soul’s alienation from Him and aversion to Him. Cleaving to sin is leaving God. The cause of sin is because “His fear is not in us.” It is for want of a good principle in us, particularly for want of the fear of God; this is at the bottom of our apostasy from Him; therefore men forsake their duty to God, because they stand in no awe of Him, nor have any dread of His displeasure. Sin is “an evil thing” and a “bitter.” Sin is an evil thing that has no good in it; an evil that is the root and cause of all other evil; it is evil indeed, for it is not only the greatest contrariety to the Divine nature, but the greatest corruption of the human nature. It is “bitter;” a state of sin is the “gall of bitterness,” and every sinful way will be “bitterness in the latter end;” the wages of it is death, and death is bitter. Sin, as it is in itself evil and bitter, so it has a direct tendency to make us miserable: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee;” not only destroy and ruin thee hereafter, but correct and reprove now; they will certainly bring trouble upon thee; the punishment will so inevitably follow the sin that the sin shall itself be said to punish thee. Nay, the punishment, in its kind and circumstances, shall so directly answer to the sin, that thou mayest read the sin in the punishment; and the justice of the punishment shall be so plain, that thou shalt not have a word to say for thyself, thy own wickedness shall convince thee and stop thy mouth forever, and thou shalt be forced to own that “the Lord is righteous.” The use and application of all this: “Know therefore, and see it, and repent of thy sin, that so the iniquity which is thy correction, may not be thy ruin.” H.

It is an evil thing and bitter. This is applicable to individuals as well as to nations. Life was not intended to be led inconsistently; one part in doing wrong, the other in being sorry for it. Uniform obedience is our Maker’s demand; and whoever departs from it wilfully, though he may return, will assuredly be made to “know and see,” one way or other, that “it is a thing evil and bitter, that he hath forsaken the Lord his God.” Abp. Secker.

We sometimes speak of the hidings of God’s countenance, as if it were a sovereign act, calling for implicit submission; when the cause should at least be sought for, and will generally be found, in some “secret thing” of indulgence, unwatchfulness or self-dependence. It was while David “kept silence” from the language of contrition that he felt the pressure of the heavy hand of his frowning

God; and may not the darkness, which has sometimes clouded our path, be the voice of our God: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know therefore and see, that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.” Bridges.

21,22. The Lord says that their sin cannot be washed out by any effort of theirs. The corruption had gone too deep. These verses show that the nation began its national life well, mainly right before God. But they had become utterly degenerate and incurably corrupt. H. C.

22. For though thou wash thee with nitre. Though thou endeavorest to wash away thy sins by the rites of expiation prescribed by the law, or practised by idolaters; though thou insistest upon thy own innocence and justification (verse 23), yet the “marks” or stains of thy sins will always appear in the sight of God till they are cleansed by a sincere repentance and reformation. W. Lowth.

Although we allow that good works are merit, and that merit is atonement, where are the good works of the sinner, where is the merit of the man who, the more works he produces, is producing so many more sins? As soon might you hope to bleach the rocks of Siddim white as snow by washing them with their own black bitumen, as hope to wash out sinful deeds with sinful deeds, old sins with new. For, alas! till a man is born from above, sin is his essence; selfishness, ungodliness, runs through all his actions, gives its pestilent aroma to his prayers, its darkening tincture to his tears. And though he could bathe his youthful years in the waters of a weeping and repentant manhood, or embalm his former sins in the virtues of his later life, after all, it would only be an Ethiopian washed in ink, impurity purged with more impurity; and in regard to the abortive attempt, Jehovah would say, “Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take ever so much soap, yet is thine iniquity marked before Me, saith the Lord.” Hamilton.

23,24. This setting forth of the senseless and reckless intoxication of the people in idol worship is exceedingly caustic, and might well put them to shame. They had become bestial, and were no longer rational in the indulgence of their passion for idols. H. C.

23. See thy way in the valley. See how thou hast practised the grossest idolatry in the valley; alluding to those idolatrous acts which were practised in the valley of Hinnom. Blayney.—The horrible practice of the Jewish idolaters, in burning their sons and their daughters in the fire, effectually confuted their pretences to innocence, since this way of worship had been expressly forbidden by God (Lev. 20 : 2, etc.). W. Lowth.

25. The passage suggests that in many cases the plea of despair is not half honest. The heart takes it up simply as an apology for rushing headlong and madly into sin. To quiet conscience and to seem to lend some ear to reason, men try and even pretend to think there is no longer any hope from God, and hence that they may as well get all the good from sin they can while they can get any. The underlying impulse is given in our text, “I have loved sin, and will follow it.”

26-28. The whole people of Israel, both their civil and their religious leaders, are put to shame by their idols, it is so senseless and ridiculous to say to a wooden pillar (a “stock”), “Thou art my father,” and to a stone, “Thou art my mother.” They will come to shame yet more when in the hour of their need they shall call on these idols for help and get none. The Lord suggests to them to try the experiment of calling on these new gods for salvation in their calamity. H. C.

In the time of trouble they say, Save us. Calamity is the test. While things go well with the idolater he forgets God or consciously dishonors Him. But when he is overtaken with the consequences of his evil deeds he is not ashamed to call upon God. The unreasonableness and inconsistency of this conduct are no barrier to it. Beneath the unbelief and worldliness of men there is a tacit belief in the goodness and power of God. In prosperity they are idolaters, in adversity they find their way back to the God they had despised. This is the universal and permanent inconsistency of the world life. P. C.

27. Turned the back to Me.** What is the opposite of conversion? It is a terrible word, because God is our only Good, our Hope, our All; but it is, you know, aversion. If we are not turned to God, we are turned away from Him. It is a terrible word, because it is so outspoken, so true, and God is so good. Yet God tells us plainly what we are doing. But is it not so true? Is there any thought which men so try to get rid of, unless they are obeying Him, as the thought of God? For it is the thought of a Master who is disobeyed, a Father who is dishonored, a Benefactor to whom we are ungrateful, an Almighty who is defied, an Indweller who is chased away, a Judge who can punish. It speaks of engageengagements broken, duties violated, conscience silenced. Pusey.

28. It is the sin of His people that provokes Him, instead of looking favorably upon them, to have His eyes upon them for evil and not for good, as He threatens (Amos 9 : 4); and therefore, without putting away of that, prayer is lost breath, and doth no good. They that still retain their sins and will not hearken to His voice, what can they expect but that the Lord, in holy scorn, in the day of their distress, should send them for help and comfort to those things which they have made their gods, and preferred before Him in their trouble? They will say, Arise and save us; but where are the gods that thou hast made? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble. Leighton.

30. Chastisement had done them no good. It had utterly failed to impress any just sense of their sin, or even to induce serious thought. No moral state possible to a moral being can be more alarming than this—to be so hardened that discipline, adapted for correction and improvement, proves utterly unavailing for any good, and only serves to aggravate the sinner’s obduracy and strengthen his committal of heart against God. H. C.

In vain have I smitten your children. The design of God’s judgments is men’s reformation; and where they do not attain this end, it shows that such a people are incorrigible. The people of Judea were so far from “receiving correction,” and turning God’s chastisements to their own improvement, that they put to death the prophets who, in God’s name, reproved them and exhorted them to repentance. Blayney.

35. Such was their strange moral blindness, that though they had murdered the faithful prophets of God, and thus innocent blood was found upon them, yet they supposed themselves quite innocent, and thought that God’s anger had all passed away. H. C.

37. Why the confidences of men do not prosper. The people of Israel are set forth, even within the limits of this one chapter, as having multiplied and extended their confidences; and yet it could not be said that they were prospering. Men with the religious element in their nature strongly clamoring for satisfaction had turned to the gods of neighboring nations, and multiplied these objects of worship until it could be said, “According to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.” God compares them to thirsty people who, with a copious fountain in their midst, work and toil to make cisterns, only to find that the end of their labor is in broken cisterns which can hold no water. And then, when their broken cisterns had proved quite unavailing, they fly to drink of Nile and of Euphrates. Evidently their confidence had not prospered, and a continuance and increase of adversity was threatened, the cause of it all being that their confidences were such as God, in His righteousness and majesty, must inevitably reject. P. C.

Chap. 3. In this chapter, verses 1-5 are connected with chap. 2, with its last two verses very closely, and in general with the strain of the chapter. At verse 6 commences another message, definitely dated in the reign of Josiah.

1. Wonderfully God’s mercy toward His treacherous, ungrateful bride is so great that He still invites her to return, even though she has gone away and played the harlot with many lovers. The reference to the Hebrew law and the current sentiments of men is designed to set forth in a more striking light the greatness of God’s forgiving love toward His apostate people.

4,5. The two questions respecting God’s keeping anger forever, probably assume that God is so merciful that He may be expected to forgive, and not keep His anger forever against themselves, now that they are professing repentance. The object in this passage is to rebuke the people for relapsing so soon and so utterly after such fair professions of repentance, made withal in words so just and suitable. Hengstenberg renders the passage: “Hast thou not but lately called me, Friend of my youth art thou? Will He reserve His anger forever? Will He keep it to the end? Behold, so spakest thou, and soon thou didst evil; thou didst accomplish it.” H. C.

4. My Father.** Thou art my Father, I will leave Thee to give me what is best. I am a very child, weak and ignorant; be Thou a Father, and a Guide, and a help to me. Thou art my Father; I will not fear to go to Thee, since Thou wilt not cast off Thy child. Thou art my Father, Thou hast therefore a right to correct me, and I will bear with patience that which must needs be for my good. Denton.

God is as much the best as He is the greatest. The Father is the best of fathers. He is tenderness itself toward His children; and all His shaded measures with us are as truly conconceived in an exquisitely benignant spirit as are those other measures whose radiant faces pour delight on all eyes. Burr.—The child of God is pleased with everything that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it had first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be the best. He is assured that no new thing can befall him, and that he is in the hands of a Father who will prove him with no affliction that resignation cannot conquer or that death cannot cure. Colton.

A call to the young. We need not hesitate so far to turn these words aside from their original meaning as to regard them as a Divine appeal to the young; especially if we understand that the prophet is here calling on Judah to return to the freshness of her “youth;” that “at this time” this hopeful reign of the good King Josiah, she should renew her covenant with Jehovah and the “love of her espousals” (chap. 2:2). In the days of youth the heart is most freely open to Divine influences, and it may be expected to respond readily to such an appeal as this. Note, 1. The deepest truth of religion is the Fatherhood of God. That He is the Father of our spirits is the basis of His claims upon us. The quality of our religious thought, the drift of our religious opinions, the tone of our religious life, depend very greatly on our faith in this truth. Fatherhood is our highest conception of God, and includes within it all aspects of His being, and all the relations He sustains toward us. This crowns them all, embraces all. We cannot rise above and beyond it. Our ideas are essentially defective if we fall short of it. Not that the actual human fatherhood worthily represents it; that, at its best, is but a marred and broken copy—a feeble, distant reflection—of the Divine. And yet the essential elements remain in spite of accidental faults. Power, wisdom, love, judicial authority, kingly rule, protective tenderness—these are the attributes of its ideal. And from the human, with all its imperfections and perversions, we rise to the Divine. 2. The apprehension of this sacred relationship is specially befitting the season of youth. What more natural than that young people should think of God as their Father; that this idea of Him should give shape and coloring to all their other religious ideas, and blend with all their views of life, and all their impressions of personal duty? P. C.

pointed out as the justly provoking cause of the national ruin. Blayney.