Jeremiah 23

And shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. This character is elsewhere given of the kingdom of Christ (see Ps. 72:2; Isa. 11:5; 32:1), His laws being the most perfect rule of righteousness, and He Himself the most impartial Rewarder of every man according to his works (Rev. 22:12). W. Lowth.

6. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Judah and Israel must here be thought of as representing the true Israel of God according to Gal. 6:16: “Peace be upon them, even upon the Israel of God.” This means the Messiah’s kingdom as enlarged by the accession of the Gentiles, and lifted to a higher plane of spiritual life by the fuller revelation of God through His Incarnate Son, and by the mission of His Spirit. In its terms, and indeed in its spirit as well, this promise (“In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely”) refers to that most sublime description of Jehovah’s care for His people, seen in De. 33:26-29: “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heavens in thy help, and in His excellency on the sky.” “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, ‘Destroy them.’’ “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone.” . . . “Happy art thou, O Israel! who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord”—“the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thine excellency!” So blessed shall be the future reign of our great King Messiah, when His Gospel shall have unbounded sway, and His love shall rule in all hearts without a rival, and unto the real holiness in heart and life of His whole people! Then Zion’s King shall bear this name, the Lord our Righteousness. In determining its significance, it is manifest that we ought to be governed by the general course of thought which obtains throughout the passage. And further, we are bound to give it a sense which will not conflict with that which we must give to precisely the same name, “the Lord our Righteousness,” when we find it applied (33:16) to the Lord’s people—to Jerusalem as the mother of us all. Guided by these principles, we must reject the interpretation which finds in this word “righteousness” the idea of Christ’s perfect obedience and merit, as constituting a fund or stock which is transferred to His people, and becomes theirs by substitution—i.e., by being accounted theirs irrespective of their own personal righteousness of heart and life. This idea need not come under special discussion here, farther than to say that it has no sympathy with the context; is altogether foreign from the course of thought in this passage; can by no means be taken as the sense of the same phrase in chap. 33:16; and therefore cannot be found here without violence and caprice. For the same reasons we must reject the analogous construction which finds in this word “righteousness,” as applied here to the Messiah, the idea of justification in the sense of the forgiveness of sin, by which sinners become right before the Divine law. This doctrine is amply taught in the New Testament; but the fact of its being true, and taught there, does not prove that it is taught here. The course of thought here holds us to the idea of a just and righteous regal administration, in the strongest contrast with the cruelly unjust reign of the last Jewish kings on David’s throne. It looks also to the resulting peace, prosperity and salvation under King Messiah, which stand over against the resulting wickedness and national ruin which came upon the nation through those wicked kings. H. C.

“Jehovah is our Righteousness,” says the prophet, using a pregnant Hebrew idiom, expressing that He is the ground and source and guarantee of our righteousness. Interpreting his words in the light of the future, and translating them into Christian phraseology, we may say that they teach us to look to God as the source of our righteousness through Christ. Driver.

“The Lord is our Righteousness,” be it the title of Prince or people, is sufficiently significant to explain its own essential meaning. There would be a transfer of the righteous character of the Ruler to be ruled; their spirit and aims would be identical with His; and He would embody their ideal life and present it to God. Through Him the Divine righteousness would be the possession of the least saint. This evidently could only be perfectly accomplished in Christ. Nothing less than a unity of spirit and life with Jesus Christ, through faith, could achieve such a result. M.

Christ secures redemption for us by His life-work and His sacrificial death, and with this comes righteousness. Christ is the incarnation of the Divine righteousness, and breathes that into us by His vital contact with His people. Christ rules in righteousness over a people whom He teaches to follow and obey Him with righteousness. Adeney.—God counts us as righteous, not alone because Christ is our Representative, but because He will restore our souls. He will make us righteous in ourselves as well as before God. And He does this by setting before us in His own life the perfect example, and attracting us thereto by an ever-increasing attraction; and by imparting to us His own Spirit, who nourishes us in all goodness; and by bringing to bear upon us the mightiest motives which can ever control or influence the human heart—love, gratitude, holy fear, bright, blessed hope—all these and yet others; so day by day does He strengthen and confirm the good will which, when we first came to Him, He gave us as His first gift. Thus does He make those righteous whom God for His sake now counts to be so. C.

One day, as I was passing into the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul: “Thy righteousness is in heaven;” and methought withal I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand—there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me, He wanted my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, “the same yesterday, to-day and forever.” Bunyan.

How His Righteousness Becomes Ours. 1. As the ground of our forgiveness. Faith in Him as our righteous “Advocate with the Father” delivers us from condemnation. We believe in no “transference of a moral quality.” As a man’s sins are his own and not another’s, so whatever of virtue there may be in him belongs to himself alone. But is it incredible that God should deal with sinful men in the way of mercy because of the perfect righteousness of “the man Christ Jesus”? “He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). There is an instinctive witness in our souls to the fact that if “grace reigns” toward us it must be “through righteousness.” This is God’s answer to that instinct: “By the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Rom. 5:18). 2. As the inspiring cause of our personal sanctification. The Gospel is God’s method of making men righteous, not a scheme by virtue of which He reckons them to be so when they are not. Faith in Christ’s mediatorial work as the ground of forgiveness draws the soul irresistibly into living sympathy with Himself. It is impossible to dwell in fellowship with Him without sharing His spirit and becoming “righteous even as He is righteous.” Not more surely does the prepared surface receive the picture the sun’s rays paint upon it than does the reverent, trustful, loving soul reflect His image. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass,” etc. (2 Cor. 3:18). Thus does His righteousness become ours. 3. As the rectifying power in the general life of the world. “A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of His kingdom,” and wherever He reigns the discords of the world are resolved into a blessed harmony. He is the Creator of “the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” W.

The “righteousness” of Christ is “imputed” to us, in this sense—that, in the abundance of His mercy, we are to be treated as if we were righteous as Jesus Christ. Let there be no reserve in our faith in this matter. Let no fear nor shame prevent us from rising to the “height of this great argument.” If this were language written or spoken by man, in the exultations of excited hope, we might be incredulous as to its truth; but the mouth of the Lord first uttered it, and the pen of the Holy Ghost first recorded it. The righteousness of God! the righteousness of our Redeemer! We to be regarded and treated as if this righteousness were our personal quality and property—as if we were holy as God Himself—holy as His spotless Son! The magnanimity of God is nothing less than this. When He describes the method of His forgiveness, it is with an affluence of promise such as compares only with His own infinity. Not only does He forgive, but forgives freely. He forgives, and remembers not. He forgives, and blots out iniquity. He forgives even to the uttermost. He forgives exceeding abundantly, above all we can ask or think. We read not only of redemption, but of plenteous redemption; not only of mercy, but of tender mercy; not only of kindness, but of loving kindness; and these repeated and multiplied beyond plural forms, into the “multitude of His loving-kindnesses.” To read of grace sufficient for us, grace from the throne, were enough; but this is amplified into “abundant” grace, “exceeding abundant,” “superabundant,” grace “immense,” grace “manifold,” the “riches of His grace,” the “exceeding riches of His grace,” the “riches of the glory of His grace.” It would seem that, on that point, where fallen humanity needed “strong consolation,” all the fulness of God were poured into the very language which assures us of the entire oblivion to which sins “that are past” shall be consigned, and the entire rectification of the fallen in reference to judicial and retributive notice. W. Adams.

7. 8. The sentiment here must be that this deliverance and the consequent blessedness of it will surpass and eclipse the exodus from Egyptian bondage, and hence this will take the place of that as a standing witness and illustration of God’s redeeming power and mercy. That they should be thought of as coming back from the north country to their own land is the natural result of the antithesis between the fruits of those last wicked reigns of the kings of Judah, and of this one all-righteous, wise and prosperous reign of King Messiah. This must needs undo the evils of that; this must restore Zion from the ruin produced by those wicked kings. The wickedness of those vile kings caused the captivity; the righteousness of this good King Messiah must cause the corresponding restoration from captivity. The force of this antithesis naturally determines the form of the expression here; and yet we should greatly err if we were to assume that the Messiah’s work consisted in precisely the literal undoing of those evils—i.e., in restoring Judah from her captivity, and in little or nothing else.

This mode of interpretation would teach that the main if not the only work of the Messiah would be to restore the Jews to Palestine and to re-establish Judaism forever. Paul held an entirely different view of Christ’s great mission. The New Testament teaches the very opposite of this. H. C.

The deliverance of Israel after the flesh is infinitely surpassed by the rescue of Israel after the Spirit from a tyranny and bondage with which the Egyptian is not worthy of being named. And the remembrance of the former is in great measure swallowed up and defaced by the abolition of those ceremonial rites and festivals; in the place of which have succeeded the two Christian sacraments, and our seasons of public thanksgiving, as commemorations and perpetual monuments of this latter and better redemption. Dean Stanhope.

9-32. The following head of prophecy, though probably delivered at the same time with the foregoing one, treats of a subject entirely different. Jeremiah testifies the horror he felt within him on contemplating the wickedness of the priests and prophets of Judah, and the vengeance which God was about to execute upon them for the corruption which had been diffused through the whole land, by the influence of their evil doctrines and example (verses 9-15). He exhorts the people, in the name of God, not to listen to the words of the prophets, who prophesied of peace when evil was determined, and would infallibly take place, as would in time appear; and charges those prophets with speaking of themselves, and not from the Divine commission (verses 16-22). God asserts His omnipresence and omniscience, and reproveth the audaciousness of the false prophets, who affected to place their own idle dreams on a level with the all-powerful and efficacious word of Divine revelation, declaring Himself against the several species of those impostors (verses 23-32). In fine, He requireth all sorts of persons to desist from an indecency in common use, of styling His word “a burden;” and threatens severely to punish those who, in defiance of this command, should continue to cast such a slur upon it. Blayney.

11. “Profane” in the strong sense of impious, reckless of the fear and honor of God. It was horrible that both prophet and priest, the orders who chiefly bore the religious responsibilities of the nation, to whom men looked for pious example and instruction, were utterly lost to all sense of their duty, and were deeply apostate from God. “Yea, in My house” (the Temple) “have I found altars for Baal,” which sinfulness with penitence, not with pain—that it makes the memory of past transgressions full of solemn joy, because the memory of past transgressions but brings to mind the depth and rushing fulness of that river of love which has swept them all away as far as the east is from the west. A. M.

23,24. The special bearing of these interrogations is upon the case of those false prophets. Do they think, saith the Lord, that I do not know their hearts? Do they flatter themselves that I am too far off to see and to know them? or that they can hide in secret places so as to escape the searching glance of My eye? In these sublime strains the Lord asserts His omniscience and omnipresence. Himself everywhere, His eye looking through all hearts—how vain for the wicked to dream that they can think a thought God will not know, or frame a device that His eye will not pierce through, or do a foul deed which He will not surely see and terribly disclose before the universe? H. C.

Two attributes—omnipresence and omniscience—are asserted. But they are so mutually dependent and so inseparable as to be virtually one. By the very necessity of His Being as the infinite Spirit, God is not more in one place or sphere of existence than another, but alike in all, “afar off” as well as “at hand,” filling heaven and earth; and wherever He is, there He is in all the fulness of His perfect intelligence, not observant or cognizant of some things or beings more than others, but having infallible knowledge of all. W.

Do not I fill heaven and earth? One of the most striking features of what we call nature is its vastness. Think of plains stretching to the horizon; of mountains piercing the clouds; of roomy continents anchored in roomier oceans; of this whole earth-sphere, with its huge baldric of twenty-five thousand miles, covered with innumerable vegetable products, peopled with men to the potential figure of a thousand millions, swarming still more potentially with the lower animals, and so flooded with microscopic life that almost every cubic inch of air and water and soil is panting with an incalculable population, some of whose smaller individuals multiply themselves into one hundred and seventy billions in four days; gather their five hundred millions in a single drop of water; and yet make up, with the stony cerements of the merest fraction of their fossil ancestry, whole mountains and geologic beds. Such is our world. Out in yonder vault, find that millionfold world which we call the sun, with its invisible retinue of a hundred earths; out in yonder vault, when night falls, find a thousand suns similarly attended; with tube Galilean, thousands more; with tube Herschelian, millions more; with tube Rossian, billions more. Is this the end? Not even Darwin doubts that successive improvements in the space-penetrating power of our instruments would go on indefinitely opening up firmaments at every step. Where is the verge of the universe? Who would undertake the roll-call of its orbs? Who dares to say that he could count through the grand total of its firmaments, even though he should count a thousand years? Figures go but a small way toward expressing the dimensions of such a universe—whether one considers the number of its worlds or the expanse of space through which they are distributed. Our world spins round its ellipse, of well-nigh two hundred million axis, without ever having a neighbor nearer than thirty millions of miles, save its own moon. The interval between our sun and the nearest star of the same galactic nebula is twelve hundred thousand times this distance. And then the distance from nebula to nebula—it is absolutely awful. Our telescopes sweep a sphere of stars whose diameter is seven millions of years, as light travels. Calculation covers its abashed face with its great wings in the presence of these overwhelming amplitudes. And such is nature!

Certainly such a universe as this does not cry out against the existence of a God whose essential attribute is immensity. On the contrary, it is just such a universe as one would have expected to come from such a being. Nay, given a Deity who is practically at home in every point of space, whose attributes are laid out on a scale of unbounded vastness, to whom it is just as easy to make and govern a trillion of worlds as it is a grain of sand, and the imperial fitness of things would demand that He people vacancy with very much that profusion and breadth of being that we actually see. The work ought to express and honor the workman. And when I am told of an author of nature who is immense with a threefold boundlessness of intelligence, might and years; so that to Him our great and small, our far and near, our centre and circumference—though that circumference sweep around all the expanses of modern astronomy—are practically the same; so that He can properly challenge, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” when I am told of this, and I then place myself out under the open dome of nature, amid its exuberant objects and marvellous stretches, I feel that the doctrine matches facts; that the theory has in its favor a comprehensive verisimilitude and presumption; that nature, instead of saying, “There is no immense God,” significantly asks, in a tone of encouragement and with a look of incipient expectation, “Is there not such a Being?” . . . A God who Himself has no duration to speak of—if there may be such a God—would never have stored His nature with such mighty cycles; a God who Himself never did a swift thing would never have set His laws to spurring on planets and suns so astoundingly; a God who Himself never did a slow thing would never have yoked such slow-footed forces to events, as we observe actually dragging at some of them. It is only a God who has substantial foreword on His hands, and who on occasion can lighten and on occasion can linger ineffably along the highway of His purposes, who is properly represented by such a nature. E. F. Burr.

28,29. If any of those false prophets have a dream, let them tell it as a mere dream, a simple fancy of the mind in sleep; but let them and let all who hear them distinguish broadly between such dreams and My words. If I give My word to any prophet, let him utter it faithfully at whatever cost—a suggestion not without its use to Jeremiah. What hath the chaff to do with the wheat, saith the Lord? Let chaff go for chaff and nothing better. Never let it arrogate a place for itself with the wheat and claim to be wheat. In verse 29 the point on which these questions bear might be either the energy of God’s word in its power on human hearts in general, or its energy when God puts it in the hearts of His prophets to deliver to lost men. The former seems on the whole the preferable view as setting forth the essential, eternal distinction between the wheat and the chaff. Yet the latter has a great truth in it—viz., that God’s word in the heart of a prophet was with burning power, as Jeremiah had occasion to say. (See 20: 9.) But this latter thought is really included under the former. H. C.

28. Speak My word faithfully.** The weapons which the pulpit-speaker wields are truths and facts, than which the Divine Mind knows none more vast and momentous; are principles unchangeable as the pillars of heaven, on which God conducts His own great affairs; are motives which the divinity Himself obeys; are interests which are transcendent, immeasurable, infinite. He brings messages which involve all good, all evil; all time, all eternity. He brings messages from Jehovah. C. White.

The Book is full of vital principles, resting upon great and permanently fruitful facts. In the use of this treasury it is the preacher’s business to bring forth things new and old, to be progressive and conservative, to spread a fresh and inviting banquet. The old statements must not be discarded or ignored; but they must not be mechanically repeated. Their vital energy must be eliminated; and in this very way there will be real progress, a constantly clearer and better apprehension of what the real mind of Christ is. Behrends.

From the pulpit there should now and ever flow a pure river of water of life clear as crystal. The grand doctrine of justification by faith only should be uplifted as a beacon on a thousand hills. Hearers should be distinctly taught our grand verities: the Father’s eternal love, the terms of the unfailing covenant, the Son’s perfect and finished work, the Spirit’s indwelling, the beauty and simplicity and purport of our Sacraments, the evidence of faith, the might of prayer, the delight of praise, the labor of love, the patience of hope, the loveliness of purity, the high walk of uprightness, the solemnity of worship, the happiness of godly life. Where such faithful teaching abounds there is no room for fear. Them that honor God, God will honor. Law.

What is wanted now, and silently called for, is the preaching of just such a Christ as the charities, and miracles, and fellow-tendernesses, and death, and resurrection of Jesus put in outline before us: God in Christ reconciling the world; He that could suffer, the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God; He that could endure enemies and came down from heaven to bear the curse of their bad lot to gain them; He that loved the poor and feared not the great; He that flavored the world by living in it; He that went through society and made His quickening, medicating power felt everywhere; He that has gone up to prepare mansions and to set His judgment-seat for the world. Oh, if He could now be preached, as He might be and some time will, what a cleaving to Him would there be! And the supernatural glory of His life and works, instead of being an objection, would only kindle the greater fire. Bushnell.

Preach Jesus Christ. Preach Him in the meekness and loveliness of His heart; preach Him in the grandeur of His death and the glory of His resurrection; preach Him in the beauty of His conduct; preach Him in the sublime exactions of His morality; preach Him for the remission of sins; preach Him as the power of an endless life. Preach Him as Paul preached Him to Jew and Greek, barbarian and Roman; not with enticing speculations, but in the demonstration and the power of the Holy Ghost; out of the depths of an experience growing richer and a knowledge growing clearer and larger; out of the peace of God which passeth understanding and the love of God which passeth knowledge; by gentle, lucid and courageous speech; by judicious and heroic silence; by patience and fortitude and faith; by forbearance and by deed, preach Him the life and light of men. Preach Him as He preached Himself, the shepherd of lost sheep, the likeness of the Father, the friend of sinners, the Redeemer of mankind. C. J. Little.

We would fain have the ministry of the Word of God surrounded with all that can serve to win attention, command reverence and excite interest; we should be alert to look out for such things, and to secure them so far as we may; but let us see to it that they be but subordinate, that they all are used as aids to what is far higher and more important than themselves—that within this husk the pure grain of God’s Word is enshrined and preserved. What is the good of any preaching or instruction, however pleasing or attractive it may be, that does not set the pure wheat of God’s Word before hungry souls? Souls must live, and they cannot live on chaff. C.

Fill with food, not flowers. Hungry men cannot eat flowers. Food, not chaff. Chaff is worse than flowers; they are at least pleasant to look at before they fade, but dry, tasteless preaching gives neither pleasure nor profit. The finest of the wheat is in the granary, and only needs serving out. But fill, do not give short measure. There need be no stint. There is plenty. The less the mind that comes, the more pains should be taken that it has a full sack. T. Champness.

Grace is contented with the simplicity of the Gospel; gifts are not contented therewithal. You see how it is with a child that comes into a corn-field; he is mightily taken with the blue or red weeds or the daisies that grow there; but now, when the husbandman comes, he looks at the corn, and is not so much taken with the blue and red weeds, or the company of daisies, but is taken with the corn itself. So take a man that hath gifts only, and bring him to a sermon or a prayer, and if there be any fine expressions, any daisies, he is much taken with them; he prizeth and magnifieth them, and he hangs on them. But now bring a man that hath grace to a prayer or to a sermon, and he looks at the corn; he doth not look at the daisies so much, but at the spirituality and power of those things that are there delivered. Gurnall.

The Gospel is either true history or it is a consummate fraud; it is either a reality or an imposition. Christ was what He professed to be or He was an impostor. There is no other alternative. His spotless life, His earnest enforcement of the truth, His suffering in its defence, forbid us to suppose that He was following an illusion of a heated brain. Every act of His pure and holy life shows that He was the author of truth, the advocate of truth, the earnest defender of truth and the uncomplaining sufferer for truth. Now, considering the purity of His doctrines, the simplicity of His life and the sublimity of His death, is it possible that He would have died for an illusion? In all His preaching, the Saviour made no popular appeals. His discourses were all directed to the individual. Christ and His apostles sought to impress upon every man the conviction that he must stand or fall alone—he must live for himself and die for himself, and give up his account to the omniscient God as though he were the only dependent creature in the universe. The Gospel leaves the individual sinner alone with himself and his God. To his own Master he stands or falls. He has nothing to hope from the aid and sympathy of associates. The deluded advocates of new doctrines do not so preach. Christ and His apostles, had they been deceivers, would not have so preached. If clergymen in our day would return to the simplicity of the Gospel, and preach more to individuals and less to the crowd, there would not be so much complaint of the decline of true religion. Many of the ministers of the present day take their text from Paul, and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to enjoy my own thoughts, rather than to listen. I want my pastor to come to me in the spirit of the Gospel, saying, “You are mortal; your probation is brief; your work must be done speedily. You are immortal, too. You are hastening to the bar of God! the Judge standeth before the door.” When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition to muse or to sleep. Daniel Webster.

There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a human composition or a Divine message. If once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God, after His flock has been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the world’s temptation, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master Himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hand and no man regarded—thirty minutes to raise the dead in—let us but once understand and feel this; and we shall wish that His words may be simple even when they are sweetest, and the place from which He speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst. Ruskin.

His sole object will be to make the message clearly understood, and to wrap its burning imperative around the hearer’s conscience. The axe must be sharpened, that something may be cut down. The rifle must be loaded, and sighted with the care of an expert that the bullet may speed unerringly to its mark. The bandages and balm must be prepared that wounded hearts may be heeled. Not reputation, but righteousness, must be the preacher’s ambition. He cannot be too careful in his analysis. He cannot have too much living logic. He must remember that nothing can bind the will which is not true to the reason; that the understanding supplies the rule of judgment to the conscience. He cannot have too much healthy passion; and he will have all the feeling he can take care of if moral verities are real to him. But he must lose himself in his hearers. He must seek them, not theirs, not even their applause, least of all himself. It must be his habitual passion to save them, to save them from sin, to save them here and now, to bring them face to face with God in Jesus Christ, until they discern their dignities and duties as the sons and daughters of God, and live accordingly. It is not the future, but the present with which he deals. It is not heaven which he is called upon to people, but to Christianize mortal men and women, and convert earthly society, in all its multitudinous activities and competitions, into the kingdom of God. It is a historical judgment and a historical redemption which constitute the burden of ancient prophecy, and which Paul has so graphically sketched in the first chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. They are in time; we have been disposed to push them to the end of time. And so we talk of a final judgment, as if there were no great white throne now; and we talk of a future salvation, as if man’s great business was to prepare for death, as if heaven were some fairy, shadowy country whose glories were never meant to make this planet radiant. But the New Jerusalem which John saw in his exile was not a city in celestial places, nor did it hang in mid air. It came down from God, out of heaven upon earth. Rome was to yield to its immortal sovereignty. The gates of pearl, the walls of jasper, the streets of gold, the river of life proceeding from the throne of God and of the lamb, and the tree of life whose leaves are for healing of nations, are symbols, one and all, of an earthly empire of righteousness. It is a historical triumph which the apocalypse heralds, coming through broken seals and emptied vials of judgment, and sounding trumpets, by famine, and earthquake, and the convulsions of nations and the overthrow of Babylon, and the sealing of the pit and the resurrection of martyrs, and the second death; just as Daniel had seen the stone smite the image of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay symbols of unsanctified political power, grinding it to powder, and filling the whole earth; and to secure that historical triumph of righteousness in this land, and in all lands, is the sole work to which we are to spend our energies. Not to get men into heaven, but to get heaven into men, is our business; not, as has been well said, “to keep them out of hell, but to keep hell out of them” is our commission. Behrends.

29. “Is not My word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” Here we have the native inherent energy of Divine truth, set forth under appropriate figures. It has power to consume all our inward corruptions, and to kindle upon the altar of our hearts the pure flame of love and zeal; it has power to reduce to contrition the stoutest and most obdurate heart of man, even the heart which seems to promise most resistance to its agency. E. M. G.

The word of God is like fire. The law was a fiery law (De. 33:2), and of the Gospel Christ says, “I am come to send fire on the earth” (Luke 12:49). Fire has different effects, according as the matter is on which it works; it hardens clay, but softens wax; it consumes the dross, but purifies the gold; so the word of God is to some a savor of life unto life, to others of death unto death. God appeals here to the consciences of those to whom the word was sent, “Is not My word like fire? Has it not been so to you? (Zech. 1:6). Speak as you have found.” It is compared likewise to a hammer breaking the rock in pieces. The unhumbled heart of man is like a rock; if it will not be melted by the word of God as the fire, it will be broken to pieces by it as the hammer. Whatever opposition is given to the word will be borne down and broken to pieces. H.

In all lands and ages a Bible ministry has been a ministry of power. “Is not My word like as a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” Yes, both fire and hammer, both shield and sword, both spade and pruning hook, both bread and water. Wonderful in the variety of its adaptations is the word of the Lord! With it we are strong, with it we are wise. With it we are ready for all duties and for all conflicts. And the helmet of brass that has protected us through life will be a pillow of down to rest our heads on in the hour of death. A home where the Bible is studied and obeyed will be thoroughly furnished even if there are no carved and upholstered sofas in it. Bible truth and Bible love will adorn the rudest environment and make palatable the coarsest fare. A heart in which the Bible is enshrined will be a holy and a happy heart, though it beat in a body racked with pain. A Christian filled with the Bible and feeding daily on its promises will be strong in the Lord. A plant of righteousness rooted in the Scriptures will be “like a tree by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” The great want in the Church to-day is a more thorough Gospel furnishing—a more systematic and prayerful study of the Scriptures. Interior.

In the forty years of my ministry I have only touched the hem of the garment of Divine truth; but what virtue has flowed out of it! The word is like its Author, infinite, immeasurable, without end. If you were ordained to be a preacher throughout eternity, you would have before you a theme equal to everlasting demands. Spurgeon.

30. The crime of these false prophets lay in stealing these words, these prophetic formulæ. They are said to steal them every one from his neighbor, but originally they came from the true prophets, and really from God Himself. Then they passed them round among themselves from hand to hand—stolen goods—used by them to make the people think they were God’s true prophets, and bore His messages.

31. To “use their tongues” is here to make too free use of them—to misuse them. How they misused them will be understood from the remarks just made in notes on verse 30.

32. If any one—prophet, priest or of the people—should ask Jeremiah what “the burden of the Lord” is, in the well-understood sense, What message of calamity does the Lord send? he was told what to answer: I will even forsake you, saith the Lord. The utmost depth of ruin lay in that burden. To be forsaken of the Lord was the direst calamity that could befall them, or any of us either.

35-37. In these verses the Lord instructs the people what phraseology they may fitly use, and solemnly cautions them against the usage of the false prophets above referred to which had grown up into a grievous abuse. They might properly say, “What hath the Lord answered” or “what hath He spoken?” But they must not say, “The burden of the Lord,” since this phrase belonged exclusively to God and His true prophets, and the wicked perversion of it by any false prophet would be done at his own peril.

40. If they persisted in abusing these solemn words, sacredly appropriated to signify revelations direct from God, He would terribly punish them, forgetting, forsaking them and casting them forth from their city and land to make them a perpetual reproach and shame. This should be the righteous doom of the false prophets, and of all who gave currency to their delusions by abetting their objects and helping them to assume the phraseology and reputation of true prophets. H. C.