The prophet with whom is a dream
Let him tell his dream,
And he with whom is My Word,
My Word let him speak in truth!
Jeremiah had no fear of the issue being threshed out between them. The wheat would be surely cleared from the straw.[562] That is a confidence which attracts our trust. In the strength of it Jeremiah was enabled to pause and reflect on the apparently equal confidence which he encountered in his opponents, and to give this every opportunity to prove itself to him before he repeated his own convictions. I cannot think, as many do, that his words to Hananiah were sarcastic; and when Hananiah broke the yoke on Jeremiah's shoulders, and it is said, But Jeremiah went his way, this was not in contempt but to think out the issue between them.[563] Nor do I feel sarcasm in his wish that his opponents' predictions of the return of the sacred vessels from Babylon might be fulfilled.[564] His brave calm words to the prophets and priests who sought his life in the Temple in 604[565] bear similar testimony. All these are the marks of an honest, patient and reflective mind which weighs opinions opposite to its own.
Further still, Jeremiah had to his credit that of which his opponents appear to have been [pg 265] devoid. As we have seen no prophet was less sure of himself, or more reluctant to discharge the duties of a prophet. Everywhere he gives evidence of being impelled by a force not his own and against his will.[566] But the other prophets show no sign of this accrediting reluctance. They eagerly launch forth on their mission; fling about their tongues, and rede a Rede of the Lord.[567] They give no impression of a force behind them. Jeremiah says that they run of themselves and prophesy of themselves, they have not been sent.[568] We still keep in mind that we owe the accounts of them to Jeremiah and Baruch, their opponents. But our own experience of life enables us to recognise the portraits presented to us, as of characters found in every age: pushful men, who have no doubts of their omniscience, but, however patriotic or religious or learned, leave upon their contemporaries no impression of their being driven by another force than themselves, and whose opinions either are belied by events, or melt into the air.
One point remains. In answering Hananiah Jeremiah adduced the example of the acknowledged prophets of the past as being always prophets of doom, so that the presumption was in favour of those who still preached doom; yet he allowed that if any prophet promised peace, and peace came to pass, he also might be known as [pg 266] genuine. That was sound history, and in the circumstances of the day it was also sound sense.
3. The Siege. (XXI, XXXII-XXXIV, XXXVII, XXXVIII.)
History has no harder test for the character and doctrine of a great teacher than the siege of his city. Instances beyond the Bible are those of Archimedes in the siege of Syracuse, 212 B.C., Pope Innocent the First in that of Rome by Alaric, 417 A.D., and John Knox in that of St. Andrews by the French, 1547. A siege brings the prophet's feet as low as the feet of the crowd. He shares the dangers, the duties of defence, the last crusts. His hunger, and, what is still keener, his pity for those who suffer it with him, may break his faith into cowardice and superstition. But if faith stands, and common-sense with it, his opportunities are high. His powers of spiritual vision may prove to be also those of political and even of military foresight, and either inspire the besieged to a victorious resistance, or compel himself, alone in a cityful of fanatics, to counsel surrender. A siege can turn a prophet or quiet thinker into a hero.