Homiletic Magazine Jeremiah 6:16 Thus said the LORD, Stand you in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein… In nothing has God consulted economy less than in the provision He has made to guard us from danger; and the Divine solicitude to rescue us from ruin is strongly contrasted with our perpetual propensity to rush into it. In the moral constitution of the mind, also, the safeguards against danger are no less remarkable than the provisions for enjoyment. Why is conscience made so acutely wakeful and sensitive, but with a view to guard us against the first approaches of sin? Why is memory made so tenaciously to treasure up the results of past experience and failure, but to repress that inconsiderate eagerness which would hurry us on to ruin? In the Bible God has preeminently placed the strongest guards on the side of danger. I. THE ATTRACTIVE VIEW OF RELIGION FURNISHED IN THIS ONE WORD "REST." God might have made religion a state of penance and bondage, and it would still have been such had we been suffered to "escape so as by fire." Instead of this, tie clothes His religion with attractiveness and tenderness. 1. It brings rest to the understanding by the truths it reveals. 2. It brings rest to the conscience by the pardon it imparts. 3. It brings rest by revealing an adequate object on which the affections can repose. The tendency of irreligion is to dishonour and degrade our nature, by confining us to the world and to time; that of real religion is to exalt and ennoble the mind by connecting us with God and eternity. The one leaves us to mourn, with orphaned heart; the other brings God before us as the object most worthy of our affections, and able to meet and satisfy the vast capacities of happiness which His own kindness has originated. II. CAUSES OF THE REJECTION OF RELIGION BY THE WORLDLY AND INCONSIDERATE. 1. A false estimate of themselves and of the evil and danger to which, in consequence of sin, they are exposed. 2. The unsuspected influence of evil habits, and the progressive and hardening tendency of uurepented sin. As Jeremy Taylor puts it: "Vice first is pleasing, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then he is obstinate, then he resolves never to repent, and then he dies." 3. The injurious and delusive results of a false and formal profession of religion. Despair is a near neighbour of presumption. The system which is founded in fraud must end in delusion. It fails to satisfy, as it fails to sanctify. 4. Because the period is extremely short in which the voice of God, as a Saviour, can be heard at all. "Mercy is like the rainbow which God set in the clouds to remember mankind. It shines here as long as it is not hindered; but we must never look for it after it is night." (Homiletic Magazine.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. |
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