Let us close our meditations upon this most striking history of God's abounding grace, in the words of one who was himself a miracle of pardoning love,—"Godly sorrow worketh repentance not to be repented of. The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." [Illustration] [Illustration] XXX. The Deed of Purchase. A LIFE of bitter trial was that of Jeremiah, the messenger of wrath and of woe, the prophet who announced evil tidings of disgrace and ruin to a profligate court and a wicked people. Jeremiah stood like a light-house on a desolate rock, exposed to the fury of the blast of calumny, the fierce billows of persecution. What would be the position of a seer, even in these days, who should announce the utter devastation of our land by famine and sword, who should declare amongst us that we should become "an execration and an astonishment, a curse and a reproach," who should pronounce a sentence of death upon monarch and noble, bid our soldiers sheath their swords, and our volunteers submit to a foreign foe without so much as a struggle? Jeremiah has recorded his own sufferings in language which shows how deeply he felt them. "I am the man that hath seen affliction. He hath made me desolate. I was a derision to all my people, and their song all the day." Nor were hatred and mockery all that the prophet had to endure. His liberty was taken away; his life was in imminent peril;—it is said that he fell at last a victim to his countrymen's hatred. When we consider also that the ruin of his nation was the source of deep affliction to one who was a patriot as well as a prophet, that—like the blessed Saviour—Jeremiah wept over Jerusalem while he foretold her destruction, we shall conclude that amongst God's saints few drank more deeply of the cup of sorrow and will scarcely wonder that in his anguish Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth. But the deed of purchase which we are now contemplating reminds us of an occasion when a gleam of joy may have shone on the darkened path of the prophet, a drop of sweetness have been mixed in his cup. The whole transaction connected with it is very remarkable. When Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the prison at Jerusalem,—when the Chaldeans were investing the doomed city which he knew must fall into their hands—then received he an intimation from God that he should purchase a field in his native place Anathoth, of which the right of redemption was his. "What have I to do with buying land!" may have been the first thought of the wondering seer; "is this a time to receive olive-yards and vineyards? I am a prisoner and cannot get forth; Anathoth is now in the hands of the enemy, and soon will Jerusalem be so also. My people will be led into captivity; the Gentiles will rule in the land: what profit can there be in this field to me or to mine!"