but it arises from inexperience
of the kind of work we have to do,--to change the heart and will of man.
It is a far nobler frame of mind, to labour, not with the hope of seeing
the fruit of our labour, but for conscience' sake, as a matter of duty;
and again, in faith, trusting good will be done, though we see it not.
Look through the Bible, and you will find God's servants, even though
they began with success, end with disappointment; not that God's purposes
or His instruments fail, but that the time for reaping what we have sown
is hereafter, not here; that here there is no great visible fruit in any
one man's lifetime. Moses, for instance, began with leading the
Israelites out of Egypt in triumph; he ended at the age of an hundred and
twenty years, before his journey was finished and Canaan gained, one
among the offending multitudes who were overthrown in the wilderness[6].
Samuel's reformations ended in the people's wilfully choosing a king like
the nations around them. Elijah, after his successes, fled from Jezebel
into the wilderness to mourn over his disappointments. Isaiah, after
Hezekiah's religious reign, and the miraculous destruction of
Sennacherib's army, fell upon the evil days of his son Manasseh. Even in
the successes of the first Christian teachers, the Apostles, the same
rule is observed. After all the great works God enabled them to
accomplish, they confessed before their death that what they experienced,
and what they saw before them, was reverse and calamity, and that the
fruit of their labour would not be seen, till Christ came to open the
books and collect His saints from the four corners of the earth. "Evil
men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being
deceived[7]," is the testimony of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and St.
Jude.

Now, in the instance of Jeremiah, we have on record that variety and
vicissitude of feelings, which this transition from hope to
disappointment produces, at least in a sensitive mind. His trials were
very great, even in Josiah's reign; but when that pious king's
countenance was withdrawn on his early death, he was exposed to
persecution from every class of men. At one time we read of the people
conspiring against him[8], at another, of the men of his own city,
Anathoth, "seeking his life[9]," on account of his prophesying in the
Lord's name. At another time he was seized by the priests and the
prophets in order to be put to death, from which