What Jeremiah Said to the Enlightenment

Reading tonight from the prophet Jeremiah I was struck by his description of false prophets (23.16-17): Thus says the LORD of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep saying to those who despise the word of the LORD, “It shall be well with you;” and to all who stubbornly follow their own stubborn hearts, they say, “No calamity shall come upon you.”

This false prophecy is surely the wisdom of our world, the wisdom of religious tolerance, that smiling sickness that bids us rather respect our neighbors than love them, that sets the revealed Word of God beside the vain imaginations of men, and the Creator among his creatures. And I know that I not least among many Christians of this age remain chained to these destructive worldly habits, and do but lend justice to God’s wrath in my every abstinence of exhortation and evangelism. And like the ancient Israelites, reproved and repentant, I still come back to Baal, as these words testify which I wrote some while ago upon this very subject.

The first part of the poem (which is hardly presentable as yet) described all the outward signs of a pious man; the silent watchman is from Ezekiel 33:1-9, and the burning tongues from Luke 16:19-31.

Thankful of Grace he is no means of Grace
To others: he will not upset the weights
That keep him in his comfort. How shall fare
This silent watchman when his righteous God
Descends from heav’n to judge the wanting earth?
Drenched in his fellows’ blood, his trembling knees
Shall scarce support his suppliance; all the words
He left unsaid, each brother unconsoled,
Untended, unrebuked, each one unloved
Shall cry to him “But wet our burning tongues!”
And he shall weep that he within him held
The cup of all Salvation and the spring
Of life eternal, and in all his time
Did never think to bring it to their lips.

God have mercy on us all.