Chapter V · The Upper Room — J. C. Ryle
— Jer. 6:161
“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” Jer. 6:16.
THE book of the prophet Jeremiah receives from most Christians far less attention than it deserves. It is a noteworthy fact that hardly any portion of Holy Scripture is the subject of so few exhaustive commentaries and expositions.
I fail to see the reason of this comparative neglect. The book was written, under God’s inspiration, by a Jewish priest, at a peculiar crisis, in the last days of the kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah was God’s messenger to a wicked king,—a worldly aristocracy,—a corrupt people, in a rotten Church, and a dead formal priesthood. He warned his countrymen faithfully, but, like Cassandra of old, he was not believed. He lived to see the complete ruin of Church and State, the city burnt, the temple of Solomon destroyed, and the people carried into captivity. And, finally, it is a Christian tradition, that, after being dragged into Egypt by the Jewish refugees, who fled there, he died the death of a martyr.
I repeat that the writings of such a prophet as this deserve more attention than they have hitherto received.
I. First of all, you have in this text excellent general advice. Jeremiah says to you, “Stand, and see, and ask.” I take these words to be a call to thought and consideration. They are as though the prophet said, “Stop and think. Stand still, pause, and reflect. Look within, behind, and before. Do nothing rashly. What are you doing? Where are you going? What will be the end and consequence of your present line of action? Stop and think.”
Now to set men thinking is one great object which every teacher of religion should always keep before him. Serious thought, in short, is one of the first steps toward heaven. “I thought on my ways,” says the Psalmist, “and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies” (Ps. 119:59). The prodigal son in the parable “came to himself” before he came to his father. He began to consider quietly the folly and uselessness of his conduct, and then, and not till then, he returned home, saying, “Father, I have sinned” (Luke 15:18). Want of thought is, in truth, the simple cause why many make shipwreck for ever. There are but few, I suspect, who deliberately and calmly choose evil, refuse good, turn their back on God, and resolve to serve sin as sin. The most part are what they are because they began their present course without thought. They would not take the trouble to look forward and consider the consequence of their conduct. By thoughtless actions they created habits which have become second nature to them. They have got into a groove now, and nothing but a special miracle of grace will stop them. That is a solemn charge which Isaiah brings against Israel: “My people doth not consider” (Isa. 1:3). “I never gave it a thought,” is the sad excuse which I have heard many a man or woman in the lower classes make for sin. The words of Hosea are strictly true of thousands: “They consider not in their hearts” (Hos. 7:2).
There are none, we must all be aware, who bring themselves into so much trouble by want of thinking as the young. From natural high spirits and ignorance of the world, they are always tempted to look only at the present and forget the future. Too often they marry in haste and repent at leisure, and lay up misery for life by wedding an uncongenial partner. Too often they choose in haste a wrong profession or business, and find, after two or three years, that they have made an irretrievable mistake, and, if I may borrow a railway phrase, have got on the wrong line of rails. Esau thought only of present gratification, and sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Dinah must needs go “to see the daughters of the land,” thinking no harm, and ends by losing her own character, and bringing trouble on her father’s house (Gen. 34:1-31). Lot thought only of the present advantage of settling in the well-watered valley around Sodom, and forgot the consequence of being mingled with a people who were “sinners before God exceedingly” (Gen. 13:13). All these found to their cost the folly of not considering, looking forward, and thinking. They sowed to the flesh, and they reaped a harvest of sorrow and disappointment, because they did not “stand and see.”
These, no doubt, are ancient things. Every middle-aged person can shake his head over the foolishness of young people, and tell us mournfully that you “cannot put old heads on young shoulders.” But the young are not the only persons who need the exhortation of the text in this day. It is pre-eminently advice for the times. Hurry is the characteristic of the age in which we live. Railways, and electric telegraphs, and general competition, appear to oblige modem Englishmen to live in a constant breathless whirl. On every side you see the many “driving furiously,” like Jehu, after business or politics. They seem unable to find time for calm, quiet, serious reflection about their souls and a world to come. They have no abstract objection to the doctrines of Christianity, or to the use of means of grace, the Bible, or private prayer. But, alas, they cannot make leisure for them! They live in a perpetual hurry, and in a hurry they too often die. If ever there was an age in England when Jeremiah’s advice was needed, it is now. If the prophet could rise from the dead, I believe he would cry aloud to the men of the nineteenth century, “Stop, and think,—look forward,—stand, and see.”