thirty miles from Jerusalem, the desolate state of Shiloh. It was as if the picture of the ruined shrine of Eli and Samuel was too much to be borne by the Priests and the Prophets, who surrounded the Temple court. They closed upon him, as in like manner upon Paul on the same spot six hundred years after. As then, so now, the deliverance of the Prophet from the fury of the religious world came from the calmer and juster view of the secular power. The Princes or nobles, who in these latter reigns had almost turned the monarchy into an oligarchy, were assembled in the King's palace, when they were summoned by the tumult in the Temple to the judgment-seat, within a gate newly erected, perhaps in Josiah's repairs, and called, in the fervor of his zeal, "The Gate of Jehovah." There the Prophet pleaded for his life, and the nobles, reckless and worldly as they were, with a deeper sense of justice than his fanatical assailants, solemnly acquitted him. Some of them appealed to the forbearance of Hezekiah towards Micah; and Ahikam, the son of Josiah's minister, stood gallantly between the Prophet and his enemies.* 3 Meantime the doom which Jeremiah had foretold was rapidly approaching. Had the worn-out empire of Assyria been the only antagonist of Jehoiakim's Egyptian patron, we might have had a long line of successors, under whom the peculiarities of the Jewish faith and nationality would have been gradually absorbed into the kingdom of the Pharaohs. But a new power was at hand, of which the full influence on the Chosen People 1 Jer. vii. 12–14; comp. xxvi. 6. 2. Ibid. xxvi. 8, 11. The LXX. has "false Prophets." But this is not expressed in the original. 3 Jer. xxvi. 10 (Heb.). was reserved for the later period of their history; but which even now, in its first beginnings, changed the relations of all the Asiatic kingdoms. The Assyrian Empire vanishes from the earth so suddenly and so noiselessly, that its fall is only known to us through the reduced grandeur of the palaces of its latest King, and through the cry of exultation raised over its destruction by the Israelite Prophet.1 Whatever may have been the other causes of its overthrow, -Scythian hordes or Median kings,2-there can be no question that in its place arose, in the plenitude of its greatness, the Babylonian Empire, under the guidance, first of Nabopolassar, known to us only through the fragments of heathen annalists, and of his greater son, Nebuchadnezzar, who for the next thirty years occupies in the horizon of Asia and Egypt the position of Sennacherib, and, yet earlier, of Rameses II. It seemed to those who wit nessed it like the rising of a mighty eagle, spreading out his vast wings, feathering with the innumerable colors of the variegated masses which composed the Chaldæan host, sweeping over the different countries, and striking fear in his rapid flight. The main object is Egypt, and the unhappy Jewish nation which, in defiance of old Prophetic warnings, past and present, has allowed Egypt to make it her instrument. “Pha“raoh, King of Egypt, is but a noise: he hath passed "the time appointed." It was at Carchemish, an ancient fortress commanding Battle of the passage of the Euphrates, that the collision took place. The Egyptian army had come Carche mish. 1 Nahum. See Lecture XXXIV. 2 For the whole of this convulsion Bee Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, chap. ix., and Ewald, iii. 726, &c. 3 Ezek. xvii. 3, &c.; comp. Jer xlviii. 40; xlix. 22. 4 Jer. xlvi. 17. against it, with all its glittering array of buckler and shield,' helmets, spears, and coats of mail, of chariots and horses, from all its subject nations, like the rising flood of its own Nile,2 and thence was driven back upon itself by the Babylonian host. To the extremities of Egypt, from the cities of the Delta, as far as Thebes, the shock was felt. With the retreat of Necho, the whole country was left open to the invading army. The snorting of the Chaldæan horses was heard from the northern frontier at Dan. The whole land trembled at the sound of their neighing. Like a whirlwind, like a torrent, they swept on.5 The terrified inhabitants retired into the fortified towns. Within the walls of Jerusalem was seen the unwonted sight of Bedouin Rechabites still preserving their Arab customs, unchanged, in the midst of the capital. The short-sighted rulers had looked for peace, but no good came,- for a time of health, and, behold, trouble. Jeremiah. Once more Jeremiah became the centre of interest. What course would he, the Prophet of the age, Policy of take in the face of this impending calamity? To all, except those who took the wildest and deepest view of the prospects of the world and of the Church, the stern policy of determined resistance had everything to recommend it. But it was that wider view which presented the whole subject to the Prophet's eye in a different aspect. He foresaw, on the one hand, that the immediate pressure of Babylon was irresistible; but, on the other hand, that it could not last. If Jeru salem could but weather the present storm, he was 1 Jer. xlvi. 2, 3, 4, 9. 2 Ibid. xlvi. 7, 8. 3 Ibid. xlvi. 14, 25; Ezek. xxx. 1-19; 2 Kings xxiv. 7. 4 Jer. viii 16. 5 Jer. xxv. 32; xlvii. 2. 6 Ibid. viii. 14. 7 Ibid. xxxv. 6-11. 8 Ibid. xiii. 15. 9 9 See Josephus, Ant. x. 7, § 4. 2 assured that it would soon pass by; and that then, whatever blessings were bound up in the preservation of the House of David and of the Holy City would remain intact. His political position has been compared to that of Phocion' in the presence of the Macedonian power, and to that of the Achæans in the presence of the Roman power. It may still more fitly be compared to that of the Jewish Christians in the time of the Christian era, when the desperate resistance of the Zealots to the armies of Vespasian and Titus hurried on the ruin of the Jewish state, in spite of the warnings of the prudent Josephus, and of One far other than Josephus, who, like Jeremiah, stood aloof from all the wild intrigues and conspiracies that would have made Him the chief of a nation of insurgents. It may be compared again to that of the leaders of the Christian Church, in the dissolution of the Roman empire,Augustine, who replied to the taunts of treason brought against the Christians by foreshadowing the rise of the City of God out of the ruins of Rome, - Salvian who, by his earnest vindication of the moral government of God, not less than by his wailings over the calamities of the time, has deserved the name of the Jeremiah of his age. It was not indifference to his country, but attachment to its permanent interests, with the yet larger consequences wrapt up in them, which induced him to counsel submission. It was his sense of the inestimable importance of that sacred spot, with its sacred institutions, which caused him to advise every sacrifice for the sake of retaining it. He had the courage, so rare in religious or political leaders, to surrender a part for the 1 Bunsen, Gott in der Geschichte, .44. 2 Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, iv. 303. 3 Novus ille hujus sæculi Hieremias" (Baronius, 476, 3). sake of preserving the whole, --to embrace in his view the complete relations of the great scheme of the world, rather than fix his attention exclusively on the one pressing question of the moment. As there are times when the constitution must be broken to save the com monwealth, — when the interests of particular nations or doctrines must give way to the preponderating claims of mankind or of truth at large,- so Jeremiah staked the eternal value of the truths which Jerusalem represented against the temporary evils of the Chaldæan dominion. It was a bitter pang, but the result seemed to him worth the cost. To steel his melting heart To act the martyr's sternest part; His life be giv'n him for a prey.1 of Jere Accordingly, the warning words which he had uttered at the beginning of Jehoiakim's reign were re- Warnings peated with more determined energy as the miah. crisis drew nearer. Every common event of life was colored with the hues of the time. The unshaken fidelity of the little colony of Rechabites to their ancestral customs suggested the contrast of the broken vows of Israel. The potter's work in the valley of Hinnom, with its surrounding scenes of the sacrifices of Tophet, filled his mind with lessons of the greatness of the designs of God, guided not by fate or caprice, but by the moral deserts of men. He stood with his scroll in his hand, containing all the prophecies of the last two and twenty years, as though it were a bowl of deadly wine 8 |