sonal vexations and attacks, it could not but be an
immeasurable grief to him to dwell in the midst of such a generation,
to see their corruption increasing more and more, to see the abyss
coming nearer and nearer, to find all his faithful warnings unheeded,
and his whole ministry in vain, at least as far as the mass of the
people were concerned. "O that they would give me in the wilderness a
lodging-place for wayfaring men"--so he speaks as early as under
Josiah, chap. ix. 1 (2)--"and I would leave my people and go from them;
for they are all adulterer, an assembly of treacherous men." But from
these personal vexations and attacks, he neither was, nor could be
exempted. Mockery, hatred, calumny, ignominy, curses, imprisonment,
bonds were his portion. To bear such a burden would have been difficult
to any man, but most of all to a man of his disposition. "The more
tender the heart, the deeper the smart." He was not a second Elijah; he
had a soft disposition, a lively sensibility; his eyes were easily
filled with tears. And he who would have liked so much to live in peace
and love with all, having entered into the service of truth, was
obliged to become a second Ishmael, his hand against every man, and
every man's hand against him. He who so ardently loved his people, must
see this love misconstrued and rejected; must see himself branded as a
traitor to the people, by those men who were themselves traitors. All
these things were to him the cause of violent struggles and conflicts,
which he candidly lays before us in various passages, especially in
chap. xii. and [Pg 371] xx., because, by the victory, the Lord, who
alone could give it, was glorified.

He was sustained by inward consolations, by wonderful deliverances, by
the remarkable fulfilment of his prophecies which he himself lived to
witness; but especially by the circumstance that the Lord caused him to
behold His future salvation with the same clearness as His judgments;
so that he could consider the latter only as transient, and, even by
the most glaring contrast between the appearance and the idea, never
lost the firm hope of the final victory of the former. This hope formed
the centre of his whole life. For a long series of years, he is
somewhat cautious in giving utterance to it; for, just as Hosea in the
kingdom of the ten tribes, so he too has to do with secure and gross
sinners, who must be terrified by the preaching of the Law, and the
message of wrath. Bu