rically they were correct. But, of course, their
interest in so saying was not historical but spiritual. Their aim was
practical--to destroy their generation's materialist belief that animal
sacrifice was the indispensable part of religion and worship. Still his
way of putting it involves on the part of Jeremiah a repudiation of the
statements of Deuteronomy on the subject. So far, then, Jeremiah opposed
the new Book of the Law.(301)

But with all this do not let us forget something more. While thus
anticipating by more than six centuries the abolition of animal
sacrifices, Jeremiah, by his example of service and suffering, was
illustrating the substitute for them--the _human_ sacrifice, the surrender
by man himself of will and temper, and if need be of life, for the cause
of righteousness and the salvation of his fellow-men. The recognition of
this in Jeremiah by a later generation in Israel led to the conception of
the suffering Servant of the Lord, and of the power of His innocent
sufferings to atone for sinners and to redeem them.

* * * * *

This starts a kindred point--and the last--upon which Jeremiah offers, if
not a contradiction, at least a contrast and a supplement to the teaching
of Deuteronomy. We have noted the absoluteness--or idealism--of that Book's
doctrines of Morality and Providence; they leave no room for certain
problems, raised by the facts of life. But Jeremiah had bitter experience
of those facts, and it moved him to state the problems to God Himself. He
owns the perfect justice of God; but this only makes his questioning more
urgent.

Too righteous art Thou O Lord, XII. 1
That with Thee I should argue,
Yet cases there are I must speak to Thee of:
The way of the wicked--why doth it prosper,
And the treacherous all be at ease?
Thou hast planted them, yea they take root, 2
They get on, yea they make fruit;
Near in their mouths art Thou,
But far from their hearts.

We shall have to deal with these questions and God's answer to them, when
in a later lecture we analyse Jeremiah's religious experience and
struggles. Here we only note the contrast which they present to
Deuteronomy--a contrast between the Man and the System, between Experience
and Dogma, between the Actual and the Ideal. And, as we now see, it was
the System and the Dogma that were defective and the Man and his
Experience of life that started, if not for h