SERMON XXII.

TEMPTATION THE SCHOOL OF THE PROPHET.

LINCOLN'S INN, 4TH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.-MAY 9, 1852.

JEREMIAH, I. 6—9.

Then said I, “Ah Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child." But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I

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am a child; for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee," saith the Lord.

It is not improbable that Jeremiah was almost a child when he spoke these words. The earliest of the prophets was called to his office when he was girded with the linen ephod which Hannah had made for him. The king of the land at the time when the word of the Lord first came to Jeremiah was a child, and yet knew that he was destined to do a great work. Josiah had clear evidence that he was designated to his task before his birth; it devolved upon him simply because he was the heir of the house of David. The like assurance came in another way to the young priest of Anathoth. To him it was revealed, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; before thou camest out of the

Serm. XXII.] THE SENSE OF A CALLING.

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womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."

I do not believe it would have been possible for either of them, when he became a man, to have suffered life without this conviction. If the king had thought that he held his power because there were some special virtues in him which entitled him to it; if Jeremiah had fancied that he was a prophet because there was in him a certain aptitude for uttering divine discourses and foreseeing calamities, who can tell the weariness and loathing which each would have felt for his task when it led to no seeming result, except the dislike of all against or for whom it was exercised,-still more when the powers and graces which were supposed to be the qualifications for it became consciously feeble. Nothing but a witness, the more sure for being secret, 'thou wast marked and sealed for this function before thou hadst done good or evil; all thy powers are endowments to fit thee for fulfilling thy vocation, but do not constitute it; they may perish, the comfort and inward satisfaction in the work may perish-it may produce nothing but pain to thyself and to those who are brought within thy influence— or harder still, it may be regarded with utter indifference and contempt by others till thou almost art taught to despise it thyself: still the words must be spoken; the acts must be done; for they are not thy words or thy acts;' —nothing, I say, but such a persuasion as this, written and re-written in a man's heart, could sustain him against the conflicts outward and inward which pursue the righteous king and the true prophet.

In proportion then as a man had to sustain a more than usual amount of such conflicts, one might suppose that his discipline would begin early, that there would be

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THE CHILD AND THE MAN.

[Serm.

intimations to him in boyhood, which would assure him afterwards that he had not rushed into his office through some momentary impulse, but that a hand, which he could not shrink from or shake off, had been leading him, drawing him, even dragging him, forwards, when he was most reluctant and would most readily have gone some other

way.

This conclusion is strengthened by some evidence in the case of Jeremiah. Considering the time to which he lived he must have been young in the thirteenth year of Josiah,— young enough to make the most literal sense of the expression in the text a reasonable one. Nevertheless I cannot think that the force of it depends upon that evidence. The feelings which Jeremiah experienced now were those which Moses experienced when he was eighty years old. He who said, "I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken to me," said in fact I am a child, only able to lisp the words that Thou wouldest have me utter in the ears of Pharaoh and of my countrymen; a helpless stranger in an inhospitable world.' When Jeremiah was eighty years old, I do not suppose that he would have used these words with less sense of their truth, than when he first felt the divine compulsion. All the intermediate time he was only learning more thoroughly how true they were, and how true the answer to them was.

No doubt there was something in the character and temperament of the man, which made this language more natural to him than it was to Moses. The meekness which is attributed to him must have been of slow growth, brought out by a long discipline. All his early acts exhibit him to us as fervid and vehement; traces of that disposition appear even in his latest years. Jeremiah has a kind of feminine

XXII.]

THE PROPHET A SUBVERTER.

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tenderness and susceptibility; strength was to be educed out of a spirit which was inclined to be timid and shrinking. Think of such a vision as this being presented to a mind cast in that mould: See I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant."

At first we should be disposed to say, 'Such words can never have applied in their strict and literal import to any seer or teacher. They belong to the warrior and the conqueror. We must explain them by a figure of speech. One who discourses of the fall of kingdoms, must be represented as himself the overthrower of them.' I do not think that either the analogy of language or the facts of the case justify that method of interpretation. If the prophet only talked of what was happening or what was to happen, no poetical licence could permit us to confound him with the subverters of thrones and societies. But have we yet to learn that a great teacher or reformer, though he may never take a sword into his hands, does that which swords cannot do; that swordsmen in fact only carry out upon the surface that which he is doing under ground? The uprooting of the thoughts and principles in which acts originate, the planting the seeds of life which are hereafter to bring forth fruits that all will recognize, are his functions. If he has received any inspiration, any vital power at all, it must be one which enables him to produce a movement at the very heart of human life and society, in a region of which the ordinary statesman knows nothing. We shall find hereafter that Jeremiah did pull down and destroy, and plant, and build, and that his countrymen felt and knew that he did. And at the very commencement of his work he has an in

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A POLITICIAN AND WARRIOR.

[Serm. The sur

ward certainty that he must be a man of war. rounding world, his own people, his nearest kinsfolk, will regard him as their enemy. A strange anticipation for one whose temptation would have been to purchase their goodwill at almost any price; who would have longed to go anywhere that he might avoid strife! Yet so it must be. There is no flight for him into quiet religious contemplation; he cannot persuade himself that he is to prove his difference from his countrymen and his superiority to them by withdrawing from the circle of interests in which they are dwelling. He may pass hours or months of solitude; but he will not be away from the events which are befalling them; he will be more deeply occupied with them; he will be contemplating them with a closeness and intensity to which the mere actors in them are strangers. The poor young priest of Anathoth can in no way sever himself from the policy of nations and rulers; Judæa, Egypt, Chaldæa, tribe and power of the earth, must be about him in his closet, must enter into his most inward personal experiences and sufferings.

every

This was the law under which every Jewish prophet lived; but in no case is it so vividly exemplified as in Jeremiah. We are brought into more direct personal intercourse with him than with any one of his order; the sensitiveness of his spirit made him more conscious than sterner natures are of shocks from those with whom he was in contact directly, and even through a member of intermediate hands; the time in which he lived compelled every man to consider what his existence as a Jew meant and what it had to do with his existence as a man. We shall not therefore understand the struggles or aspirations of his individual soul, if we go to the prophecy for the purpose of observing them.