From the poor idol-ridden labourer,
offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven to coax her into sending him a
good harvest, to the tyrant king who had built his palace of cedar
and painted it with vermilion, he had a bitter word for every man.
The lying priest tried to silence him; and Jeremiah answered him,
that his wife should be a harlot in the city, and his children sold
for slaves. The king tried to flatter him into being quiet; and he
told him in return, that he should be buried with the burial of an
ass, dragged out and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem. The
luxurious queen, who made her nest in the cedars, would be ashamed
and confounded, he said, for her wickedness. The crown prince was a
despised broken idol--a vessel in which was no pleasure; he should be
cast out, he and his children, into slavery in a land which he knew
not. The whole royal family, he said, would perish; none of them
should ever again prosper or sit upon the throne of David. This was
his message; shame and confusion, woe and ruin, to high and low;
every human being he passed in the street was a doomed man. For the
day of the Lord was at hand, and who should be able to escape it?
A sad calling, truly, to have to work at; and all the more sad
because Jeremiah had no pride, no steadfast opinion of his own
excellence to keep him up.
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