Jeremiah 2:36

Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way?

Living to purpose

I. The importance of having an object in life. There is a vast difference between the state of a man when running a race, and when sauntering about to kill time. There is an equal difference between the men who pass through this city on business, and those who come to the metropolis merely to see sights. Plant yourself upon London Bridge, the city side, about nine o’clock in the morning, and look into the faces of the men who are crossing that bridge. Go into the National Gallery, or into the British Museum, any day when these places are thronged, and look into the faces of the persons who are there. A very different state of thought and feeling you will find revealed by those faces. Now in this difference we see the importance of a well-defined and all-commanding object. An object in life sufficient for a man, brings him out, educates him. The prize calls out the school boy who contends for it; the honours of the university elicit the mind, and the scholarship of the man who wrangles for them--and any object has a similar effect, the pursuit of which fully calls out a man’s powers. This is education. Instruction is not education. Education, as the very word implies, is the calling forth of what is within a man; and the objects and subjects of pursuit do more in our education than the mere reading and study of books. Desiring a particular end, and determining to obtain it, the man asks, What have I that I can use in order to reach this end? An object calls out a man. And an object keeps the man out. It calls him out, and maintains the manifestation and the development. He is not like the snail, but is like the bee, or as the ant. His powers are never withdrawn--in all working time they are outstretched. Neither is there incessant and useless change in his operations. He who gads about to change his way, having no fixed and definite object, but changing his object almost with the change from month to month, and from season to season, never lays hold of anything that is worth securing. But a man with a good object, with a commanding object, and a sufficient object, cannot afford to be unstable. Now, if a man’s powers he called out, and kept out amid obstacles and conflicting circumstances, the education of the man is yet further advanced. He is opposed, say, in the pursuit of his object. Well, this opposition keeps the earnestness and the seriousness alive within him. It is a great advantage to be opposed in the pursuit of our object. If men will only take opposition with good temper, and be quiet, and of a meek and patient spirit, they will always be the better for it. Annoyances arise--he feels that if he yields to them he shall be unfitted for his pursuit. What does he? He keeps down his susceptibilities to fretfulness, and he learns quietness of heart. How soon the man learns this, who is in constant intercourse with the Saviour about all the objects of his pursuit, and who tells Him everything that dwells on his mind about everybody, and about every circumstance! He can see the invisible; he can assure his heart of what his hand does not now grasp--and thus he is educated by his object.

II. While it is important that every man should have some object, it is more important that the object of pursuit to every man should be good. Say that a man sets out with fame as his end. He means to be known; he means to get into every newspaper. Such a one does everything to be seen and to be spoken of. That which will not tell upon his reputation he will not do. He wishes the trumpet to call attention to everything which he executes; he wishes to be called the best scholar, or the noblest patriot, or the richest merchant, or the most devoted philanthropist of his day. He wishes to be called first; and he pursues that end. Now, such an end will make a man proud and vain. In all matters of morality and religion such a man will be most unsteady. Consider wealth a man’s object. He plans and labours to get money--to get it for spending or for hoarding; and money is the man’s goal. This will make him narrow-minded, and selfish in heart. Men will rise and fall in his estimation according to their possessions, and objects will be pursued as they secure to him money. Perhaps this was the goal of Judas; and see what effect it produced upon him. He lost his soul in running to it. Consider power a man’s end. He lives and toils to subdue others to himself. This makes a man ungenerous, cruel, unjust, and often impious. Admit pleasure to be a man’s object. This destroys the proportions of the human constitution, and throws out of their right and proper place the several parts of our human nature. Now, put in contrast with fame, money, power, as the chief end of man, the good of others. Say that men are living to effect some object in connection with the well-being of their fellows; then you have such a character as that of John Howard, Wilberforce, Elizabeth Fry, Buxton. Howard’s object, as you know, was the release and the relief of the prisoner; and while John Howard’s disposition led to the choice of this pursuit, that disposition to do good grew marvellously under the training influence of his object. Wilberforce was naturally sympathetic, but his efforts for the slave marvellously enlarged his heart. Buxton would have been a noble man anywhere, but his pursuit of the extinction of slavery made him grow like the palm tree, and flourish like the cedar in Lebanon. Many a female culprit would confess their obligations to Mrs. Fry; but Newgate was a school of grace to the prisoners’ friend and teacher: and if she could hear us talking of her now, she would say to us, “Speak not of anything I did, but rather tell what all this did for me. It was far more blessed for me to communicate, and to give, and to strive in that prison to do good, than it ever was simply to receive.” (S. Martin, M. A.)

As to gadabouts

The illustration by which this prophet of tears deplores the vacillation of the nation to whom he wrote, is a homely one. Now they wanted alliance with Egypt, and now with Assyria, and now with Babylon, and now they did not know what they wanted, and the behaviour of the nation reminded the prophet of a man or woman who, not satisfied with borne life, goes from place to place gadding about, as we say, never settled anywhere or in anything, and he cries out to them: “Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way?” Well, the world has now as many gadabouts as it had in Bible times. Gadabouts among occupations, among religious theories, among churches, among neighbourhoods, and one of the greatest wants of the Church and the world is more steadfastness and more fixedness of purpose. It was no small question that Pharaoh put to Jacob and his sons when he asked, “What is your occupation?” Getting into the right occupation not only decides your temporal welfare, but may decide your eternal destiny. Last summer a man of great genius died. He had the talents of twenty men in surgical directions, but he did not like surgery, and he wanted to be a preacher. He could not preach. I told him so. He tried it on both sides of the sea, but he failed, because he turned his back on that magnificent profession of surgery, which has in our time made such wonderful achievement that it now heals a broken neck, and by the X-ray explores the temple of the human body, as if it were a lighted room. For forty years he was gadding about among the professions. Do not imitate him. Ask God what you ought to be, and He will tell you. It may not be as elegant a style of work as you would prefer. It may be callous and begrime your hands, and put you in suffocating atmosphere, and stand you shoulder to shoulder with the unrefined, but remember that if God calls you to do one thing you will never be happy in doing something else. All the great successes have been gained through opposition and struggle. “Hard pounding,” said Wellington at Waterloo,--“hard pounding, gentlemen; but we will see who can pound the longest.” Yes, my friends, that is the secret, not flight from obstacles in the way, but “who can pound the longest.” The gadabouts are failures for this life, to say nothing of the next. There are many who exhibit this frailty in matters of religion. They are not sure about anything that pertains to their soul or their eternal destiny. Now they are Unitarians, and now they are Universalists, and now they are Methodists, and now they are Presbyterians, and now they are nothing at all. They are not quite sure that the Bible was inspired, or, if inspired, whether the words or the ideas were inspired, or whether only part of the book was inspired. Gadding about among religious theories, and never satisfied. All the evidence is put before them, and why do they not render a verdict? If they cannot make up their mind with all the data put before them they never will. If it is a good book, your eternal happiness depends upon the adoption of its teachings. Once and forever make up your mind whether it is the book of God or the book of villainous pretenders. So, also, many are unfixed in regard to their spiritual condition, and day after day, and year after year go gadding about among hopes and fears and anxieties. Why do you not find out whether you are His or not? There are all the broad invitations of the Gospel. Accept them. There are all the assurances. Apply them. This moment you have all the information pointing to the road that terminates at the gate of the Golden City, and the voyage that anchors in the haven of eternal rest. Why go on guessing when you have all the facts before you? My text also addresses those who in search of happiness are going hither and yonder looking for that which they find not. Let all the gadabouts for happiness know that in kindness and usefulness and self-abnegation are to be found a satisfaction which all the gaieties of the world aggregated cannot afford. Among the race of gadabouts are those who neglect their homes in order that they may attend to institutions that are really excellent, and do not so much ask for help as demand it. One bad habit these gadabouts, masculine or feminine, are sure to get, and that is of scandal distribution. Such gadabouts have little prospect of heaven. If they got there they would try to create jealousy among the different ranks of celestials. Therefore let us resolve that we will concentrate upon what is right thought and right behaviour, and waste no time in vacillations and indecisions and uncertainties, running about in places where we have no business to be. Life is so short, we have no time to play with it the spendthrift. (T. De Witt Talmage.)