all conditions. This was the heathen idea: the deity of a nation was bound on every occasion to defend his own; his wrath might, indeed, be feared if the offerings brought to his temple were curtailed, but, when these were forthcoming in due number and with the proper ceremonies, he was bound to exert himself on the side of his worshippers. Within the Hebrew people itself the same belief was too common. Jesus had to complain of it in His day: His contemporaries believed that they would enter in a body into the Messianic kingdom simply because they were the children of Abraham. In Jeremiah's age also the same delusion was prevalent. His fellowcountrymen superstitiously repeated the words, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these "; they believed that in every case Jehovah must defend His own territory and save His own people; Zion was inviolable; in short, they were Jehovah's favourites, and in no case would He desert them.

It was the life-work of Jeremiah to explode this superstition. None could believe more passionately than he in the divine choice of Israel; but this choice had a definite purpose, and this was not to keep Israel safe and happy in all circumstances, but to produce a holy nation. Jehovah abhors sin; Jeremiah says that the single purpose for which the prophets were sent from age to age was to repeat in the ears of the people in God's name, "Oh, do not this abominable thing which I hate." On the other hand, God delights in lovingkindness, judgment and justice. To create, then, a nation which would abhor sin and practise the virtues of lovingkindness, judgment and justice was the purpose of Jehovah's choice.1 But, if this purpose was frustrated, and if Israel turned out to be a nation which delighted in sin and trode lovingkindness, justice and 1 xliv. 4; ix. 24.

judgment underfoot, then there was no reason whatever why God should waste His love upon them. On the contrary, His love would be changed to indignation, and even for their own sake He would have to visit them with the whips and scourges of calamity.1

This had actually taken place. The burden of Jeremiah's entire prophecy is the utter frustration of the Divine intention through Israel's backsliding; therefore, he says, the love of God is changed to anger and fury, His protection is withdrawn from the holy land and the holy city, and the Gentiles are even summoned by Jehovah to execute His vengeance on His own chosen people.

In vain the people answered that they paid to Jehovah in His temple the due number of sacrifices and duly observed all the rites of worship. This was a heathen plea, but to Jehovah ritual without righteousness is nothing: "I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing I commanded them: Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My people; and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you; but they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear."

These revolutionary truths Jeremiah was instructed to exhibit before the people in a concrete form in one of those symbolic actions of which he was fond. He was told to go down to the potter's house, and there God would cause him to hear His words. So he went to the potter's house and saw the artist work a work on the wheel; but the vessel was marred in the hands of the potter, who thereupon, reducing it to a shapeless mass, remade it a different vessel as it seemed good to him. Then spake the Lord in the prophet's consciousness: "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord; behold, as the 1 iv. 4; vii. 20; v. 9; ix. 9.

2 Ch. xviii.

clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O house of Israel." By superficial readers this has been supposed to teach the most outrageous fatalism: that God can make or mar the destiny of everyone as He pleases, wholly without respect to human will or character. But, in fact, what it teaches is exactly the reverse; it is that God is not bound by His decree or promise to bless and favour any, if they depart from Him. So the passage proceeds: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck up and to pull down and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them; and at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it, if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." God's promises are attached to moral conditions, and, when these conditions are not fulfilled, He claims the right to revoke them.

The God of Jeremiah is the God of Salvation.

The words just quoted appear to contain the final doom of Israel. The intention of God in Israel's vocation had been frustrated; therefore the promises were revoked, and Israel was abandoned and cast away. In Jeremiah there are many passages to this effect: "I have taken away My peace from this people, saith the Lord, even lovingkindness and mercies"; "Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward this people; cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth." These were words of fearful menace, and they were followed by events which confirmed them and proved from whom they had proceeded. The throne was overturned, the capital sacked, the temple burnt, the country desolated, the popu

1 xvi 5; xv. 1.

lation carried away captive. It seemed the end of the history of Israel; apparently Jehovah had finally cast off His people.

It is precisely at this desperate moment, however, that Jeremiah's most characteristic teaching about God comes in. It may have excited surprise that Jeremiah's teaching about God should have been delayed so long in this series of papers. It is by his conception of God that a prophet is made. Ought not, then, his doctrine of God to have the first place in any account of his theology? There are prophets in whose thinking this is certainly its natural place. It is so, for example, in the case of Isaiah. His prophetic activity began with an overpoweringly sublime vision of the divine glory, and this incident set its mark on every page of his writing; his entire theology is deducible from his conception of God. With Jeremiah, however, it is different. He also has a sublime conception of God, but it is not primary in his system of ideas. The sins and the needs of the world in which he lives are with him primary, and God comes in as the power who is to put the world right.

The same contrast may be observed between other pairs of thinkers. The theology of St. John, for example, as the prologue to his Gospel indicates, begins in the seventh heaven, and only takes up man by the way; St. Paul, on the contrary, always begins on the ground, however high he may subsequently soar: it is from man's need that he is led up to Heaven's grace. In modern times a theologian like Calvin begins far up in the sovereignty of God, whereas a thinker like Chalmers starts from the disease of human nature and ascends to heaven in search of a remedy.

Now the point at which Jeremiah most urgently required God was where the case of Israel was most desperate, and this point was reached when his own predictions of evil were all fulfilled. But it is just in this valley of the shadow

of death that the voice of Jeremiah is heard uttering its most lyrical word and its most musical note-a word and a note in which is contained the magic of all revelation. For the God of the Bible is neither the God of nature, nor the God of Israel, nor the God of morality-though He is all these—but He is, above and beyond everything else, the God of salvation. "O the Hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble "-this is Jeremiah's formula for this truth; but one of the psalmists has given it perfect expression: "He that is our God is the God of salvation." 1

JAMES STALker.

THE SPEECHES IN THE CHRONICLES.

2

THE article of Dr. French in the August number of the EXPOSITOR Seems to call for some notice on my part. He has, it is true, neither substantiated his own position nor shaken mine; but in a cumulative proof, consisting of a large number of independent arguments, there are naturally some which are less forcible than others, and of these he has made the most. His paper is essentially an attempt to invalidate the conclusions reached by me in my previous article, by arguing that I have exaggerated the marks of the Chronicler's style in 1 Chr. 29, and unduly minimized those in 1 Chr. 17. As there may be some readers to whom it may not be apparent why this attempt fails, I have thought it proper to examine his article in some detail, and to consider seriatim the principal objections raised in it. My reply will at the same time afford me the opportunity of stating more distinctly some of the points noticed by me

1 Ps. lxviii. 20.

2 Whom I regret in my previous article to have inadvertently neglected to designate by his legitimate title.

3 EXPOSITOR, April, 1895, p. 241 ff.