JEREMIAH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 308, 26 November 1932, Page 2

JEREMIAH.

PROPHET OF FAITH. THE BIBLICAL KEYWORD. The reading of passages from Jeremiah in the Sunday services is probably greeted with no particular enthusiasm. The historical books of the Old Testament have many a story of the highest dramatic quality, and such prophets as Isaiah and Ezekiel bring the inspiration of their literary eloquence and spiritual vision. But Jeremiah seems to bo continually complaining, and to be doing little but assure his hearers that all their efforts will lie useless. ■ Is this not the temperament of the typical pessimist — indeed, of the defeatist 'i Buell a reflection, based on some particular lesson, would bo natural enough, and yet be almost completely off the mark as a description of one of the greatest and most heroic figures in the literature of the Old Testament (says a correspondent of the London Times). For Jeremiah was one of those men who, facing what they know to bo the unescapable truth of things, refuse to soothe either themselves or others by the smallest concession to illusion. Over the whole of liis prophetic ministry might be written those words of Ajax in Sophocles’ tragedy:—“lt is not for a wise physician to wail charms over a wound which needs the knife.” That wound was for Jeremiah the sin of pride, which makes man seek refuge in illusion because he will not look honestly and steadfastly at the truth—God’s truth. Knowing that an hour of destiny had struck for the Kingdom of Judah, he knew that there was no way of any salvation, present or future, except by acknowledging it and accepting whatever it might bring. Judah could not save herself, and God would not save her in the way in which she expected to be saved. That was Jeremiah’s message, and in giving it he stood almost alone, the one great realist of his age. TRAGIC VERSION OF LIFE. If it is the sign of a pessimist to face the full meaning of human weakness, to face it, not vaguely like a man assenting to a general truth of reason but in some particular, critical instance, then, certainly, Jeremiah is a pessimist. But by that standard and definition the Bible is a library of pessimism. For the Bible is written, from cover, to cover, by men who do not believe that humanity can save itself by its own efforts, men who return again and again to the thought of the inadequacy of man as man, an inadequacy constantly registered in human failures, follies and sins. The Biblical writers know the truth of the tragic version of life. There are more ways than one of reading the tragic version of man’s history. There is the tradition of acceptance in the spirit of a proud refusal to surrender. There is the tradition of fatalistic acquiescence in whatever the unseen powers may send, since, whether they be friendly or hostile, they cannot be resisted. And there is the Biblical tradition of acceptance in the spirit, not of acquiescence, but of faith. That is the Biblical keyword. That is the Biblical remedy for human pride and human pessimism—and pessimism is often simply the collapse of human pride. To the man who does not understand this such books as Jeremiah and Job may well seem intolerable, since in these two books there is the stark contrast between the entire failure of all human security and unswerving faith in God. Faith‘means the refusal, in the presence of catastrophe, to doubt either God’s existence or His goodness, which in the Epistle to Titus is called “His philanthropy towards man.” Jeremiah had plumbed the depth of woe ; his experience had no room for the pretence of an illusionary optimism; he has no encouragement of that nature to give. From a merely human point of view things were as bad as they could be. Everything spoke of failure; there was no place for hope, but only for despair. It was because he saw and said that so clearlv that his contemporaries could not do with him, and his name has liecome a by-word—yet, in truth, not of shame, but of honour.