after he began to prophesy, and in that age books of every kind were rare.

When first invited to assume the office of a prophet, Jeremiah shrunk from the service. Though the king was an ardent worshipper of Jehovah, the princes and people were still mad after their idols. It demanded so much courage and nerve to reprove their wickedness, that the retiring young man could not summon resolution to attempt such a duty. With the modesty so common an attendant on genius and true worth, he desired to be excused: "Ah, Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I am a child." But gathering confidence from the promise of divine aid, he entered on the responsible task. And a responsible task truly it was, in that age and among so perverse a people as the Jews, to perform a service which could be little else than rebuke and denunciation. Girded with strength from above, the youthful prophet undertook to declare all God should command him to speak, however much it might arouse the indignation of princes, priests, or people.

The commission of Jeremiah was not limited to his own countrymen. 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." Judaism was only preparatory to Christianity: it was fitted but for a small territory. It would not have been possible

for distant nations to come up to Jerusalem three times in a year, as was required of the Jews; nor could men, women, and children, from remote lands, assemble in that city once in seven years, to hear the law. Hence the prophets took little pains to extend the institutions of Moses to other nations. Jonah was indeed sent for a special purpose with a message to the Ninevites; and Isaiah and some other prophets had a burden" for heathen nations; but it was denunciation of judgment for their sins, not instruction in the principles of the Jewish religion. Though Jeremiah was "set over the nations," his chief office in respect to the heathen, in like manner, was "to root up and to pull down.” Jeremiah prophesied eighteen years during the reign of Josiah. He must have shared in the deep feeling which pervaded the heart of the king and the whole nation at the discovery of the Pentateuch. Why on that occasion he was not consulted rather than the prophetess Huldah, we do not know. Perhaps he was at Anathoth, and the anxiety of the king would not admit of delay. Hilkiah was one of the deputation sent by the king to inquire of the Lord. If he was the father of Jeremiah, he might feel some delicacy, at such a crisis, in going to his young son for advice. He might think it expedient to resort to some older person of established reputation. However this was, the messages of Jeremiah must have aided in preparing the king,

as well as some of his subjects, to be affected by the precepts and threatenings which they found in the law.

The first twelve chapters of Jeremiah are supposed to have been spoken in the reign of Josiah. They abound in reproofs of the people for apostasy, in melting intreaties to induce them to return to their allegiance, in rebukes for the insincerity of their apparent reformation, and in threatenings of punishment if their disobedience should be continued.

The sacred record contains but few incidents in this part of the history of Jeremiah; but his inner life, how he thought and felt, is revealed by his messages and the emotions which attended their utterance. Some of the prophets seem, in the discharge of their office, to be almost impersonal. They doubtless felt, but they did not disclose their feelings. They seem rather to be the unconscious organs through which the spirit of prophecy was manifested, than living, sympathizing members of the human family. Elijah, for example, in denouncing appalling judgments against Ahab and Israel, is so absorbed in his official character as to appear like a being of another race, to whom human frailties and sufferings are unknown. But when Jeremiah is summoned to proclaim the judgments of heaven against his countrymen, he seems to be overwhelmed with emotion. Predicting the

Chaldean invasion in language vivid and terrific, he cries out, “ I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, Oh my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war." When Jerusalem, long besieged, and disappointed of the aid so anxiously expected from Egypt, raises the lamentation, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved," the prophet exclaims, My heart is faint in me. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me." And as if the wickedness and threatened woes of his countrymen were more than he could endure, he sighs forth, "O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men."

Jeremiah seems to have remained for some years in his native city exercising the prophetic office. But gentle as was his disposition, so pungent were his reproofs and so well aimed at the conscience, that his fellow-townsmen, his very brethren the priests, were ready to put him to death. Perhaps, as is common in similar cases, they felt rebuked for their own lack of zeal by the earnestness of Jere

miah. They conspired against him, saying, “Let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may no more be remembered." One might suppose they would not venture on such violence, in the reign of Josiah; but when men are irritated by the truth, they will incur almost any danger to avenge themselves on their reprovers. The prophet, resorting to the Lord for protection, was commanded to denounce to the people of Anathoth that their young men should die by the sword, and their sons and daughters should die by famine, in the year of their visitation. His own kindred joining in the treachery, he went to reside at Jerusalem. Here he would be an active assistant to the king in restoring the worship of Jehóvah, and cleansing the land from idol-altars and idol-gods. He would be in little danger from his enemies, so long as Josiah lived; they might be indignant at his rebukes, but their rage would be suppressed through fear of the royal displeasure.

When Jeremiah, in his despondency, complained to the Lord of the dangers which beset him in his mission among his friends and neighbors, it was intimated to him that still greater dangers would attend the more public discharge of his ministry. "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst, they have wearied thee, then how wilt