which were about to fall upon Jerusalem, directly and obviously due to the perjury and stupid pride of her rulers; but, as he more subtly saw, the immorality of the whole people had been disabling them, for years before, from meeting these or any disasters except as sheer punishment without place for repentance. Their previous troubles had failed to sober or humble them or rouse them. _They would not accept correction_, he says of them more than once.(781) To the Prophet’s warnings that God will judge them, they answer carelessly or defiantly _Not He!_ Instead of yielding to the power which lies in all adversity to cleanse the heart and brace the will they became incapable of shame, indifferent to consequences, and so past praying for.(782) And in this they were fortified by the specious dreams and lies of their false prophets, continued to sin, and so fell to their doom, abashed at last but unassoilable.(783) If at any time they were startled by disaster, this found them too enfeebled even for repentance by their habitual insincerity or self-indulgence; which made them incapable of truth even under pain, and of a real conversion to God.(784) All this is discovered to us by the eyes and the mouth of Jeremiah. What in it is arbitrary? The record is awful, nothing like it in literature. Yet every step is real. We follow a master of observation. But perhaps the chief glory of our Prophet is that while thus delivering, as no other prophet so fully or so ethically does, the just wrath of God upon sin, he reveals at the same time that His people’s sin costs God more pain than anger. This no doubt Jeremiah learned through his own heart. As we have seen, with his whole heart he loved the people whom he was called to test and expose, and that heart was wracked and torn by thoughts of the Doom which he had to pronounce upon them. So also, he was given to feel, was the heart of their God. In the following questions there is poignant surprise; an insulted, a wounded love beats through them. What wrong found your fathers in Me, That so far they broke from Me? Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say my folk, “We are off, No more to meet Thee!” Can a maiden forget her adorning Or her girdle the bride? Yet Me have My people forgotten Days without number.(785) So, too, when the deserved doom threatens, and in hate He has cast off His heritage, His love still wonders how that can be— Is My heritage to Me a speckled wild-bird With the wild-birds round and against her? Is Israel a slave, Or house-born serf? Why he for a prey?(786) All the desolation of Judah is on Him alone: _no man lays it to heart, upon Me is the waste_.(787) And what we have seen to be the most human touch of all, the surprise of an outraged father at feeling, beneath His wrath against a prodigal son, the instincts of the ancient love which no wrath can quench,