I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.

and he knew that G.o.d was speaking to him.

A stifled groan escaped his lips. The muscles of his face and body, tense up to this moment, relaxed. He dropped to his knees and gave up the fight. He buried his face in his arms and cried, in a m.u.f.fled voice:

Alas, O Lord G.o.d!

Behold, I do not know how to speak; I am only a youth.

This plea showed clearly what inward agonies Jeremiah had been through.

Timid by nature, he shrank from G.o.d's call to him to go out and prophesy to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, and he struggled against it. Although he was now a young man of twenty-four or five, he feared to undertake this great task and to answer the call. He felt that he was yet too young and unprepared to deliver the message of G.o.d to his people.

But G.o.d answered him, saying:

Do not say, "I am only a youth"; For to all to whom I shall send thee, thou shalt go, And whatever I command thee, thou shalt speak.

Be not afraid of them, For I am with thee to deliver thee.

And Jeremiah tells us that G.o.d, having stretched out His hand toward him and touched his lips to purify them, spoke to him further:--

Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth; See, I have set thee this day over the nations and kingdoms, To tear up, to break down and to destroy, to build up and to plant.

Now that G.o.d had selected him for a distinct and set purpose in life, no matter how incapable and unworthy he deemed himself, and being a.s.sured of His help and protection, Jeremiah walked slowly homeward.

For the first time he noticed that the sun had risen big and bright and warm. His mind was calm and at rest, but his heart was filled with woe because of what the future held out for him and his people.

CHAPTER IV.

_The Seething Caldron._

An old Hebrew proverb says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he shall not depart from it." If one should say that the man who wrote this proverb must have thought of King Josiah, the statement could not be entirely denied. For the religious training he received at the hands of Zephaniah and Hilkiah soon showed itself in the way he began to revolutionize the religious life of Judah.

When he was only eighteen years old he began to uproot the heathen worship that had been reintroduced by his grandfather, after the death of Hezekiah and Isaiah. His aim was to cleanse the land entirely of the foreign altars and sanctuaries that Mana.s.seh had erected to the G.o.ds of Babylonia and a.s.syria.

In the twelfth year of his reign, that is, in the year 627, the old chronicler tells us, Josiah

"brake down the altars of the Baalim in his presence; and the sun-images that were on high above them he hewed down; and the Asherim, and the graven images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strewed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them, and purged Judah, and Jerusalem."

It was at this time that the decline in the fortunes of a.s.syria set in. Esarhaddon and his successor, Ashurbanipal, preserved a semblance of holding the empire together; but it was not for long. Built up by mercenaries, whose fighting was for pay and not for their country, the weak rulers who followed Ashurbanipal on the throne in Nineveh hurled the empire quickly to its fall.

Even in the last days of the cultured and ill.u.s.trious Ashurbanipal the outlying provinces of a.s.syria became independent. The a.s.syrian governors were slowly withdrawn from the tributaries along the Mediterranean Sea, and Judah, always ready to resist a foreign yoke, began to feel its independence.

Josiah added to his territory most of what had been the kingdom of Israel and reigned over a country that nearly equalled in size that of David and Solomon. This good fortune of Judah, perhaps more than anything else, convinced the king that G.o.d was again favoring his nation, and that, therefore, it was time to remove from his dominions all those things that were abominations in the sight of G.o.d.

Now, it is one thing to cleanse a land of its outward show of idolatrous worship and abominable practices and another to purge the hearts and minds of a people that have been sotted with these for more than two generations. To do the latter never entered into Josiah's calculations. He didn't even give it a thought. But the uselessness of outward reforms, without inward chastening, did not escape the deep-thinking Jeremiah.

It was evident to him that Josiah was only scratching the surface and he wanted to come to the well-meaning king's help. Notwithstanding his call and his conviction that his life work as a prophet had been determined upon even before his birth, Jeremiah was yet too timid to take up his burden among the people until the word of G.o.d came to him a second time, saying:

"Gird up thy loins and arise, Speak to them all that I command thee, Do not be terrified before them, lest I terrify thee in their presence; For behold, I myself make thee this day a fortified city, And a brazen wall against the kings of Judah, its princes, and the common people.

And they shall fight against thee, but they will not overcome thee, For I am with thee to deliver thee."

So Jeremiah's course was not to be smooth and easy! He would encounter opposition from the common people, the princes, the king himself! But there was no turning back for him now! Though his heart was heavy, it was determined. Jeremiah went down to Jerusalem to preach.

His first pleadings were in line with Josiah's reforms:

"A voice is heard upon the bare heights, the weeping and the supplications of the children of Israel; because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten the Lord their G.o.d.

Return ye backsliding children; I will heal your backsliding."

Jeremiah began his eventful career with the old cry of Amos and Hosea, against the widespread evil, the seething caldron of idolatry and wrongdoing that threatened the destruction of the nation. It was far more serious, however, than in the days of the earlier prophets. Then the people worshiped idols and seemed to know no better; now the people employed all the ancient idolatrous practices for worshiping the idols and the heavenly bodies and G.o.d at the same time.

Therefore, Jeremiah heard from the people at the idols' shrines, in reply to his pleadings, practically the same answer that greeted Amos at Bethel:

"Behold, we have come unto thee, For thou art the Lord our G.o.d."

To this false idea that G.o.d-worship and idol-worship are the same thing, Jeremiah gave answer patiently and kindly, as if reasoning with children, recalling what G.o.d had accomplished for Israel in the past and the duty of obedience to His voice by Israel's descendants in the present:

"Truly in vain is the help that is looked for from the hills, the tumult of the mountains; truly the Lord our G.o.d is the salvation of Israel. But the shameful thing (idolatry) hath devoured the labor of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our confusion cover us; for we have sinned against the Lord our G.o.d, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day; and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our G.o.d."

Then Jeremiah delivered a message of hope, of G.o.d's promise to the people, in case they should return from their backsliding:

"If thou wilt return, O Israel," saith the Lord, "if thou wilt return to me and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight; then shalt thou not be removed; and thou shalt swear, 'As the Lord liveth,' in truth, in justice, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory."

Jeremiah aimed at first merely to arouse the people to a knowledge of their false point of view toward G.o.d; but he soon discovered that he was on the wrong track. Pleading, persuasion, promises and prophecies of hope had no more effect upon the daily life of the people than did Josiah's destruction of the shrines and sanctuaries upon their religious practices.

It was at this time that evil days came upon the Empire of a.s.syria. It was crumbling to pieces. From north of the Black Sea and from east of the Carpathian Mountains savage hordes of Scythians were swarming over a.s.syria. Nomads, without any settled country whatever, they were sweeping eastward and southward, down across the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, creating devastation everywhere. They were not only eager for the far-famed riches of a.s.syria, but looked toward the south, even as far as Egypt.

And the little kingdom of Judah lay directly in their path, as it did during former attempted conquests of Egypt.

Jeremiah once more recalled the vision of the seething caldron, with the strong wind from the north, threatening to pour out the hot contents over the land.

Poor Judah! The country was seething with destructive idolatry within, and the seething hordes of Scythians were endangering its life from without.

Poor Jeremiah! What was there for him to do now? A double calamity was hanging over his people and his beloved country. Even if he stood alone he must try to save them both.

So he began a campaign, the burden of which was two-fold. He undertook to warn the people against the danger which even King Josiah had recognized and of the new danger that was threatening from the north.

He felt sure, as had the other prophets before him, that unless the people turned from their backsliding they would lack the moral courage to withstand the foreign foe and could never gain G.o.d's help and protection in fighting their enemies.

Once more he returned to his early methods of pleading with the people. He appealed to them to restore the relationship of children and father that had existed between them and G.o.d from the earliest days. He recounted their history from the slavery of Egypt to his own day. He pointed to the wonderful things that G.o.d had performed for them, but it all seemed of no avail.

Then he turned to the people with the threats of the danger from the north. He tried to impress them with the idea that G.o.d was sending the Scythians as an instrument with which to punish the idolatrous and immoral Judeans.

"Behold a people is coming from the northland, And a great nation is arousing itself from the uttermost parts of the earth.

They lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless.

Their din is like the roaring of the sea, and they ride upon horses.

Everyone is arrayed as a man for battle against thee, O daughter of Zion.

"We have heard the report of it, our hands become feeble; Anguish taketh hold upon us; Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the highway, For there is the sword of the enemy, terror on every side.