I. THE DIVINE COMMISSION. Beneath the Divine impulse, Jeremiah went up to the court of the Lord's house, and took his place on some great occasion when all the cities of Judah had poured their populations to worship there. Not one word was to be kept back. We are all more or less conscious of these inward impulses; and it often becomes a matter of considerable difficulty to distinguish whether they originate in the energy of our own nature or are the genuine outcome of the Spirit of Christ. It is only in the latter ease that such service can be fruitful. There is no greater enemy of the highest usefulness than the presence of the flesh in our activities. There is no department of life or service into which its subtle, deadly influence does not penetrate. We meet it after we have entered upon the new life, striving against the Spirit, and restraining His gracious energy. We are most baffled when we find it prompting to holy resolutions and efforts after a consecrated life. And lastly, it confronts us in Christian work, because there is so much of it that in our quiet moments we are bound to trace to a desire for notoriety, to a passion to excel, and to the restlessness of a nature which evades questions in the deeper life, by flinging itself into every avenue through which it may exert its activities. There is only one solution to these difficulties. By the way of the cross and the grave we can alone become disentangled and discharged from the insidious domination of this evil principle, which is accursed by God, and hurtful to holy living, as blight to the tender fruit.

II. THE MESSAGE AND ITS RECEPTION. On the one side, by his lips, God entreated His people to repent and turn from their evil ways; on the other, He bade them know that their obduracy would compel Him to make their great national shrine as complete a desolation as the site of Shiloh, which for five hundred years had been in ruins. It is impossible to realise the intensity of passion which such words evoked. They seemed to insinuate that Jehovah could not defend His own, or that their religion had become so heartless that He would not. "So it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made, an end of speaking all that the Lord commanded him to speak unto all the people," that he found himself suddenly in the vortex of a whirlpool of popular excitement. There is little doubt that Jeremiah would have met his death had it not been for the prompt interposition of the princes. Such is always the reception given on the part of man to the words of God. We may gravely question how far our words are God's, when people accept them quietly and as a matter of course. That which men approve and applaud may lack the King's seal, and be the substitution on the part of the messenger of tidings which he deems more palatable, and therefore more likely to secure for himself a larger welcome.

III. WELCOME INTERPOSITION. The princes were seated in the palace, and instantly on receiving tidings of the outbreak came up to the temple. Their presence stilled the excitement, and prevented the infuriated people from carrying out their designs upon the life of the defenceless prophet. They hastily constituted themselves into a court of appeal, before which prophet and people were summoned. Then Jeremiah stood on his defence. His plea was that he could not but utter the words with which the Lord had sent him, and that he was only re-affirming the predictions of Micah in the darts of Hezekiah. He acknowledged that he was in their hands, but he warned them that innocent blood would bring its own Nemesis upon them all; and at the close of his address he re-affirmed his certain embassage from Jehovah. This bold and ingenuous defence seems to have turned the scale in hie favour. The princes gave their verdict: "This man is not worthy of death, for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God." And the fickle populace, swept hither and thither by the wind, appear to have passed over en masse to the same conclusion; so that princes and people stood confederate against the false prophets and priests. Thus does God hide His faithful servants in the hollow of His hand. No weapon that is formed against them prospers. They are hidden in the secret of His pavilion from the strife of tongues.

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)