ts, the nobles, and the populace by his
rebukes. As a prophet he had no honor in his native place. He uniformly
opposed the current of popular prejudices, and denounced every form of
selfishness and superstition; but all his protests and rebukes were in
vain. There were very few to encourage him or comfort him. Like Noah, he
was alone amidst universal derision and scorn, so that he was sad beyond
measure, more filled with grief than with indignation.

Jeremiah was not bold and stern, like Elijah, but retiring, plaintive,
mournful, tender. As he surveyed the downward descent of Judah, which
nothing apparently could arrest, he exclaimed: "Oh that my head were
waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and
night for the daughter of my people!" Is it possible for language to
express a deeper despondency, or a more tender grief? Pathos and
unselfishness are blended with his despair. It is not for himself that
he is overwhelmed with gloom, but for the sins of the people. It is
because the people would not hear, would not consider, and would
persist in their folly and wickedness, that grief pierces his soul. He
weeps for them, as Christ wept over Jerusalem. Yet at times he is stung
into bitter imprecations, he becomes fierce and impatient; and then
again he rises over the gloom which envelops him, in the conviction that
there will be a new covenant between God and man, after the punishment
for sin shall have been inflicted. But his prevailing feelings are grief
and despair, since he has no hopes of national reform. So he predicts
woes and calamities at no distant day, which are to be so overwhelming
that his soul is crushed in the anticipation of them. He cannot laugh,
he cannot rejoice, he cannot sing, he cannot eat and drink like other
men. He seeks solitude; he longs for the desert; he abstains from
marriage, he is ascetic in all his ways; he sits alone and keeps
silence, and communes only with his God; and when forced into the
streets and courts of the city, it is only with the faint hope that he
may find an honest man. No persons command his respect save the Arabian
Rechabites, who have the austere habits of the wilderness, like those of
the early Syrian monks. Yet his gloom is different from theirs: they
seek to avert divine wrath for their own sins; he sees this wrath about
to descend for the sins of others, and overwhelm the whole nation in
misery and shame.

Jeremiah was born in the little eccle