Jeremiah 5:1-9 Run you to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if you can find a man… One of the greatest services which a man can render society is to believe the truths of God sincerely, and maintain them steadfastly. It is the happiest state for a community when there exists within it a vigorous Christianity — a phalanx of strong minds, fully persuaded as to the revealings and requirements of the Most High. Like the willows by the water courses which are not only green, but whose roots, penetrating and interlacing in the soft and spongy soil, prevent it from being swept away by the rushing torrent, these men of gentle manners, but profound convictions, are the living network, the rampart of roots unnoticed and unthanked, who keep society from crumbling piecemeal into the gulf of licentiousness and atheism and crime, which is forever surging and foaming past it Like the metallic clamps and rivets, the bands and girders, which, in a region of earthquake, keep the precarious houses from tumbling to pieces, law and police magistracy are a mere mud masonry, and but for the binding power of such consciences, but for the fastening force of their convictions who believe in God, in the upheavings of man's passions, in the volcanic throes of his lust and violence, the framework of society would soon be shaken all to pieces. Like the fragments of iron in a mass of stone, which draw it towards the magnet, it is the "faith which He finds in the earth," which at any period draws the earth towards its Maker, or makes a community "a people near to God." (James Hamilton, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it. |
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