elieved? Would not the people have
regarded him as a madman, great as was his eloquence, or as the most
gloomy of pessimists, for whom they would have felt contempt or bitter
wrath? And had he added to his predictions of ruin, utterly
inconceivable by the giddy, pleasure-seeking, atheistic people, the most
scathing denunciations of the prevailing sins of that godless city, all
the more powerful because they were true, addressed to all classes
alike, positive, direct, bold, without favor and without fear,--would
they not have been stirred to violence, and subjected him to any
chastisement in their power? If Socrates, by provoking questions and
fearless irony, drove the Athenians to such wrath that they took his
life, even when everybody knew that he was the greatest and best man at
Athens, how much more savage and malignant must have been the
narrow-minded Jews when Jeremiah laid bare to them their sins and the
impotency of their gods, and the certainty of retribution!

Yet vehement, or direct, or plain as were Jeremiah's denunciations to
the idol-worshippers of Jerusalem in the seventh century before it was
finally destroyed by Titus, he was no more severe than when Jesus
denounced the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, no more mournful
than when he lamented over the approaching ruin of the Temple. Therefore
they sought to kill him, as the princes and priests of Judah would have
sacrificed the greatest prophet that had appeared since Elisha, the
greatest statesman since Samuel, the greatest poet since David, if
Isaiah alone be excepted. No wonder he was driven to a state of
despondency and grief that reminds us of Job upon his ash-heap. "Cursed
be the day," he exclaims, in his lonely chamber, "on which I was born!
Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child
is born to thee, making him very glad! Why did I come forth from the
womb that my days might be spent in shame?" A great and good man may be
urged by the sense of duty to declare truths which he knows will lead to
martyrdom; but no martyr was ever insensible to suffering or shame. All
the glories of his future crown cannot sweeten the bitterness of the cup
he is compelled to drain; even the greatest of martyrs prayed in his
agony that the cup might pass from him. How could a man help being sad
and even bitter, if ever so exalted in soul, when he saw that his
warnings were utterly disregarded, and that no mortal influence or power
coul