If Jeremiah thus of his own will suffered _with_ his people, and to the
bitter end with the worst of them, was he also conscious of suffering
_for_ them? After his death, when the full tragedy of his life came home
to his people's heart, the sense of the few suffering for the many, the
righteous for the sinners, began to be articulate in Israel--remarkably
enough, let us remember, in the very period when owing to the break-up of
the nation the single soul came to its own and belief in the
responsibility of every man for his own sins also emerged and prevailed.
Of the influence of the example of Jeremiah's spiritual loneliness,
combined with his devotion to his sinful people, in developing these
doctrines of individualism and self-sacrifice for others there can be no
doubt. The stamp of his sufferings is on every passage in that exilic work
"Isaiah" XL-LXVI, which presents the Suffering Servant of the Lord and
declares the atoning virtues of His Agonies and Death.

But it is not clear that Jeremiah ever felt anything of this about
himself; if he did so he has refrained from uttering it. Yet he must have
been very near so high a consciousness. His love and his pity for his
sinful people were full. He can hardly have failed to descry that his own
spiritual agonies which brought him into so close a personal communion
with God would show to every other man the way for his approach also to
the Most High and Holy and his reconciliation with his God. Again he was
weighed down with his people's sins; he bore on his heart the full burden
of them. He confessed them. The shame which the people did not feel for
them, he felt; and he painted the curse upon them in words which prove how
deeply the iron had entered his own soul. He had a profound sense of the
engrained quality of evil,(741) the deep saturation of sin, the enormity
of the guilt of those who sinned against the light and love of God.(742) A
fallacy of his day was that God could easily and would readily forgive
sin, that the standard ritual might at once atone for it and comfortable
preaching bring the assurance of its removal. He denied this, and affirmed
that such things do not change character; that no wash of words can
cleanse from sin, no sacraments, however ancient, can absolve from
guilt.(743) That way only strict and painful repentance can work;
repentance following the deep searching of the heart by the Word and the
Judgments of God and the agony of learning and d