is that the personal piety which henceforth flourished in
Israel as it had never flourished before, weaving its delicate tendrils
about the ruins of the state, the city and the altar, and (as the Psalms
show) blooming behind the shelter of the Law like a garden of lilies
within a fence of thorns, sprang from seeds in Jeremiah's heart, and was
watered by his tears and the sweat of his spiritual agonies.

* * * * *

We are now come to a confluence of the streams we have been tracing--the
prophecy of the New Covenant. This occupies no incongruous place,
following hard as it does upon that of the eating of sour
grapes--individual inspiration upon individual responsibility. But we
cannot off-hand accept it as Jeremiah's own; the critical questions which
have been with us from the beginning embarrass us still.

The collection of Oracles to which that of the New Covenant belongs, Chs.
XXX, XXXI, was not made till long after Jeremiah's time; it includes, as
we have seen, several of exilic or post-exilic origin.(814) But so do
other chapters of the Book, in which nevertheless genuine prophecies of
Jeremiah are recognised by virtually all modern critics. The context
therefore offers no prejudice against the authenticity of the prophecy of
the New Covenant, XXXI. 31-34. But the form and the substance of this have
raised doubts, so honest and reluctant as to deserve our consideration.
Duhm starts his usual objection that the passage is in prose and a style
characteristic of the late expanders of the Book. We may let that go, as
we have done before, as by itself inconclusive;(815) the prophecy may not
have come directly from Jeremiah's mouth but through the memory of a
reporter of the Prophet, Baruch or another. More deserving of
consideration is the criticism which Duhm, with great unwillingness, makes
of the terms and substance of the prophecy. He objects to the term
_covenant_: a _covenant_ is a legal contract and could hardly have been
chosen for the frame of his ideal by so pronounced an anti-legalist as
Jeremiah. The passage "promises a new Covenant--not a new Torah but only a
more inward assimilation of the Torah by the people, and emphasises the
good results which this will have for them but betrays no demand for a
higher kind of religion. If one does not let himself be dazzled by the
phrases _new covenant_ and _write it on the heart_ then the passage tells
us of the relation of the individua