Text:
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk there, end ye shall find rest Jor your souls." Jeremiah 6, 16. gy appointed Lessons from the Old Testament during the month of October*are taken from the Book of Jeremiah. The. Prophets of Israel'were seldom popular with the people, and Jeremiah was no exception.
Indeed, he seems to have been the most unpopular of them all.
It was an age almost of national apostasy, and the sins were so glaring and universal that they needed a stern censor.
This they found in Jeremiah, who denounced their sins with unsparing vehemence, painting them in their true colours and predicting what the results must Be; and Israel of that day, with a very modern failing, hated to be told the truth, and hated Jeremiah because he fearlessly told it.
They sneered at him and professed to despise him because he dared to say the old was better than the new. They called him antiquated and out of date because he was always talking about the good old days, when people lived simple lives, feared God and kept the Commandments.
Israel- of Jeremiah's days had chosen as their ideal the powerful heathen nation to the south, Egypt. They wanted to form a close alliance and to model Israel along Egyptian lines in laws, morals and even in religion, If the leaders had their way, there would be a clean sweep Of all that Israel had loved and believed in. They thought that by laking heathen Egypt as their model they would speedily attain to Egypt's greatness and splendour. Against all this the Prophet set himself and protested with all his power, but all in vain, for there are times when a people are determined to destroy themselves, The Israelites were weary of everything old, everything that made for restraint,—Moses, David, and even God—and Jeremiah shouted to re-gardies ears that it was a policy of ruin and disaster. He urged in vain that their salvation lay in holding fast the faith and morals which had made their fathers great. "Thus saith the Lord," he cried, "Stand ye in the old ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.