Jeremiah 40:16

REFLECTIONS

I BEG the Reader to make a solemn pause over this Chapter, and to remark, how soon a sense of divine judgments lose their effect, except divine grace keep the remembrance of them, with all their blessed consequences, alive in our hearts. Who should have conceived that after so alarming a visitation, in the putting out the eyes of the king, and carrying him and his nobles away into captivity, with all the residue of the people excepting the poor, that rebellion and disaffection should have sprung up among them. But so it is. There can be no change but what grace makes. And much it is to be feared, that if the miserable in everlasting chains, under darkness to the judgment of the great day, were once again to be permitted to come on earth, their minds would be the same, and the sin and malignity of their nature remain unchanged. Lord Jesus! give to thy people that new heart, and that new mind, in which the new birth consists: that by regeneration they may be prepared for the everlasting enjoyment of thee in glory; since thou thyself hast said, without it, we cannot see the kingdom of God!