been preserved fro

tenderest and most anxious care. Their nation had foreign enemies, by a succession of deliverers whom the Lord raised up. Their faith had been kept alive by a long succession of interpositions, which, to us who survey them from a distance, bear the evident impress of divine superintendance. The truth had been constantly held up to them by the long line of prophets and teachers, who acted as the interpreters of God's miraculous dispensations. They had never been suffered to lose sight either of causes of the evils they brought upon themselves, or of means to remedy them. All had now been tried which either threats or promises, forbearance or fatherly chastisement, could effect, and all had been insufficient. “I have spoken unto you, saith the Lord, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto Me. I have sent unto you also all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers. But ye have not inclined your ear nor hearkened unto Me. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold I will bring upon Judah and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced against them: because I have spoken to them but they have not heard, I have called unto them but they have not answered."

The measure of their iniquity was now full. Yet even after all this, the Lord did not think fit to pronounce this final sentence of condemnation unaccompanied by a concluding expostulation. Before the prophet Jeremiah was commissioned to utter their irrevocable doom, the Lord said unto him, "Go to the house of the Rechabites, and speak unto them, and bring them into the house of the Lord, and give them wine to drink." Then Jeremiah took Jaazaniah and his brethren and his sons and the whole house of the Rechabites, and set before them pots full of wine, and said unto them, Drink ye. But they said unto him, We will drink no winę; for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye nor your sons for ever:

This was one of those almost dramatic representations in which the prophetic books abound; and the real meaning is subsequently explained. "Then came the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, saying, Go and tell the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Will ye not receive instruction nor hearken unto My words. The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, which he commanded his sons, not to drink wine, are performed, for unto this day they drink none, but obey their father's commandment. Notwithstanding I have spoken unto you rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened unto Me."

This instance of obedience to a human parent,

one who had been in the grave more than 200 years, and to whose memory they were attached by nothing more than an hereditary feeling, is contrasted with the obstinate neglect of the Israelites to obey the living God-their heavenly Father, whose eye was always over them.

The Rechabites could deny their appetites without repining, and refused to enjoy the comforts of a domestic life, but dwelt in tents, living in a land where they were strangers. And this they did, not with a view to obtain any benefit to themselves—not from any motive either of hope or fear-but merely because their ancestor Jonadab, the son of Rechab, had charged them so. The privations and restraints which God imposed upon the Israelites were far less grievous than these. He required scarce any thing at their hands but what a just sense of their own happiness would have dictated. And from obedience to this easy yoke, they had every thing to hope; from rebellion against it, they had every thing to fear. Yet in spite of all this, they would not incline their ear, nor hearken.

trast which God sets before them.

This is the con

By the example

of the Rechabites, He shows them that they could obey if they would, and because they would not He determines to punish them.

It is probable that few have read this chapter without feeling astonished at the obstinacy and infatuation of the Israelites. But if we stop short with mere astonishment, we shall have lost the

most instructive portion of the lesson it conveys. These things are not recorded to show us how very foolish and deaf to their best interests men have been in distant ages, but to make us distrustful of our own security; to remind us that since we also are men, we must be on our guard against the same infatuation.

Nor let any person allow himself, on light grounds, to suppose that he in his own person is entirely free from it. The point in this narrative which is most surprising, is the perseverance of one set of men in pursuit of an object, the value of which we cannot understand, and the complete indifference of another set, to an object quite as easily within their reach, and the value of which we perceive to be inestimable. Now if any one will be at the pains to look around him, or to examine his own heart, he will find that he himself, and almost every one, are in themselves an example of this surprising inconsistency. He will detect himself and his neighbours in dedicating as much time and pains to the pursuit of things, which even themselves own to be comparatively insignificant, as would, if directed to higher objects, secure to them an inheritance in heaven.

There is indeed scarcely any thing in the whole face of human affairs, which when one comes to consider it, is so amazing as the disproportion of the exertions we make, to the acknowledged value of the ends to which they are directed.

We cannot turn our eyes in any direction without seeing instances of men who lead lives of labour and discomfort in the pursuit of such things as wealth, power, or praise, and really think nothing of the difficulties they face, and pain which in many instances they undergo.

How many people are there, who, at an early age, leave their friends and their country, to go into the most unpleasant and unhealthy situations-some into the most intensely hot countries, and some into the coldest, with the certainty of not returning till many of the best years of their life are past, and with the great chance of either dying themselves before the time of their return arrives, or at any rate of finding many of their dearest friends dead before they have another opportunity of seeing them. These persons are actuated with the wish, which, as far as it goes, is a good one, of relieving their parents from the burden of maintaining them, of making their way in the world, some by the profession of soldier or sailor, some by taking a share in trade, some by acquiring knowledge. And all of these would despise, as a pitiful low-spirited person, any one who should shrink from an opportunity of getting forward, either through regard to his health or to his comfort.

Nor need we look to these alone for instances of perseverance and self denial; we see the same thing, though perhaps in a less striking and obvious degree, in our own immediate neighbourhood. The