gave the book into the hands of Seraiah, ast he was not to go to Babylon himself. When Seraiah should arrive at Babylon he was to read aloud its threats. "O Lord, Thou hast spoken against this place to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever." Having uttered these solemn words, perhaps in the very midst of the city through which the river ran, he was to bind the roll to a stone, cast it into the Euphrates, and cry aloud, "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring on here." Another day ten thousand times more awful for the mystical Babylon is yet to come, when "a mighty angel shall take up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and be found no more at all'." As As surely as the first Babylon has experienced the destruction predicted, so surely shall like judgment come upon the

second.

Jer. li. 61-64.

Rev. xviii. 21.

A brief period of repose was allowed to the Prophet after the captivity. He remained with the remnant of his people, preferring, like the great Lawgiver and Prophet, "affliction" with them to the rank and honour which there was every reason to expect from Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. But as he had at the beginning been, against his own passionate desire, "a man of strife and confusion," so was it to be to the end. The remnant, under Johanan, murdered the governor whom the King of Babylon had set over them at Mizpeh, and then proposed to march to Egypt. Again the Prophet lifted up his voice, again he implores them to remain, declaring that there was safety for them so long as they remained in the land, but that to go to Egypt would be certain disaster. But the dreadful habit of disobedience still wrought on their hearts. To hear the word of exhortation or command had become a signal with them to stop their ears and disobey. And so they went, and dragged the Prophet with them. Still, how

8 Heb. xi. 25.

ever, he continued to warn them. By the image of stones which he caused to be hidden in clay beneath the entry of Pharaoh's palace at Tahapana, he pointed out that the royal pavilion of Nebuchadnezzar should there no less be stretched, and by many most striking words warned the people that Egypt could never give them safety, for that she was herself soon to give up the ghost of power.

For how long a series of years this continued we are unable to say. Some are of opinion that Jeremiah lived in Egypt for nearly twenty years, continuing his later prophecies. In Egypt, however, whether by the sword of his countrymen or by natural decline, at an early period or a late one, he at length found a rest from the heat and violence of a sultry and a stormy life, a grave such as prophets have generally found, either dug by persecution and watered by blood, or hidden away from friend and foe alike, safe and quiet only because obscure and unknown.

In looking back at his decease in Egypt, and comparing it with the long and mourn

ful captivity of the nation in Babylon, we may well use his own affecting language as the motto and the epitaph of himself and of his people, "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country h."

h Jer. xxii. 10.

Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

SERVING TWO MASTERS.

NOT often do men undertake natural impossibilities; not seldom do they take in hand moral ones: and they do so for the more part without much regard to the retrospects or the prospects of failure. Hence it is that men set about many a moral impossibility as though it had never been tried before, or as if, having been tried often, the attempt had as often, if not uniformly, succeeded. As to natural impossibilities, there is the fear of ridicule to deter men from undertaking them. Men do not like to be laughed at; hence, in their natural undertakings they eschew as much as they can those courses of conduct which are calculated to bring upon themselves the laughter of their fellows. When we revert to underNo. 67. THIRD SERIES.

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