XXII. SPIRITUAL DISLODGEMENTS. JEREMIAH, xlviii. 8.-"Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed." THERE is a reference here, it will be seen, to wine, or to the process by which it is prepared and finished. It is first expressed from the grape, when it is a thick, discol ored fluid or juice. It is then fermented, passing through a process that separates the impurities, and settles them as lees at the bottom. Standing thus upon its lees or dregs in some large tun or vat, it is not further improved. A gross and coarse flavor remains, and the scent of the fecu lent matter stays by and becomes fastened, as it were, in the body of the wine itself. To separate this, and so to soften or refine the quality, it is now decanted or drawn off into separate jars or skins. After a while it is done again, and then again; and so, being emptied from vessel to vessel, the last remains of the lees or sediment are finally cleared, the crude flavors are reduced, the scent itself is refined by ventilation, and the perfect character is finished. So it has not been, the prophet says, with Moab. He hath been at ease from the first, shaken by no great overturnings or defeats, humbled and broken by no captivities, ventilated by no surprising changes or adversities He has lived on, from age to age, in comparative security, settled on his lees; and therefore he has made no improvement. What he was, he still is; his taste remains in him, and the scent of his old idolatries and barbarities of custom is not changed. Accordingly the prophet goes on to declare, in the verses that follow, that God will now deal with him in a manner better adapted to his want; that he will cause him to wander, empty his vessels, break his bottles, give him all the agitation he needs, and so will make him to be ashamed of the idolatries of Chemosh, even as Israel was made ashamed of Bethel, their confidence. There has all along been a kind of mental reference, it will be seen, in his language, to the singular contrast between Moab and Israel, which here in these last words comes out. Israel, the covenanted people, have had no such easy and quiet sort of history. They have been wanderers, in a sense, all the while; shaken loose or unsettled every few years by some great change or adversity; by a state of slavery in Egypt, by a fifty years' roving and fighting in the wilderness, by a time of dreadful anarchy under the Judges, by overthrows and judg ments under the Kings, by a revolt and separation of the kingdom, then by a captivity, then by another; and so, while Moab, heaved and loosened by no such changes, has retained the scent of its old customs and abominations, Israel has become quite another people. The calves of Bethel were long ago renounced; the low superstitions, the coarse and sensual habit, all the idolatrous fashions and affinities which corrupted their religion, have been gradually fined away. Similar contrasts might be instanced among the states and nations of our own time; in China, for example, and England; one standing motionless for long ages, and becoming an effoete civilization, absolutely hopeless as regards the promise of a regenerated future; the other emptied from vessel to vessel, four times conquered, three times deluged with civil war, converted, reformed and rereformed in religion, and finally emerging, after more than one change of dynasty, into a state of law, liberty, intelligence, and genuinely Christian manhood, to be one of the foremost and mightiest nations of the world. But my object is personal, not political or social, and the principle that underlies the text is one that may be universalized in its applications. It is this: That we require to be unsettled in life by many changes and interruptions of adversity, in order to be most effectually loosened from our own evils, and prepared to the will and work of God. We need, in other words, to be shaken out of our places and plans, agitated, emptied from vessel to vessel, else the flavors of our grossness and impurity remain. We can not be refined on our lees, or in any course of life that is uniformly prosperous and secure. My object will be to exhibit this truth and bring it into a just application to our own personal experience. Observe, then— 1. How God manages, on a large scale, in the common matters of life, to keep us in a process of change and prevent our lapsing into a state of security such as we desire. No sooner do we begin to settle, as we fancy, and become fixed, than some new turn arrives by which we are shaken loose and sorely tossed. When the prophet declares that He will overturn, overturn, overturn, he gives in that single word a general account of God's polity in all human affairs. The world is scarcely turned on its axle more certainly than it is overturned by the revolutions of Providence. It seems even to be a law, in every sort of business or trade, that nothing shall stand on its lees. Credit is a bubble bursting every hour at some gust of change. What we call securities are as well called insecurities. Titles themselves give way, and even real estate becomes unreal under our feet. Nor is it only we ourselves nat unsettle the security of things. Nature herself conspires to loosen all our calculations, meeting us with her frosts, her blastings, her droughts, her storms, her fevers, and forbidding us ever to be sure of that for which we labor. Markets and market prices faithfully represent the unsteadiness of our objects. We look upon them as we might upon the sea, and it even makes one's head swim, only to note the fluctuations of all human goods and values represented there. Nothing in the world of business is allowed to have a base of calculable certainty. Unfore seen disasters wait on our plans, in so many forms and combinations, that we are sure of nothing, and commonly bring out nothing exactly as we expected to do. The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand decanting process, where change follows change, and all are emptied from vessel to vessel. Here and there a man, like Moab, stands upon his lees, and commonly with the same effect. Fire, flood, famine, sickness in all forms and guises, wait upon us, seen or unseen, and we run the gauntlet through them, calling it life. And the design appears to be to turn us hither and thither, allowing us no chance to stagnate in any sort of benefit or security. Even the most successful, who seem, in one view, to go straight on to their mark, get on after all, rather by a dexterous and continual shifting, so as to keep their bal ance and exactly meet the changing conditions that befall them. Nor is there any thing to sentimentalize over in this ever shifting, overturning process, which must be encountered in all the works of life; no place for sighingvanity of vanities. There is no vanity in it, more than in the mill that winnows and separates the grain. But we must hasten to points more immediately relig ious, carrying with us, as we may, a lesson derived from these analogies. Observe, then— 2. That the radical evil of human character, as being under sin, consists in a determination to have our own way, which determination must be somehow reduced and extirpated. Hence the necessity that our experience be so appointed as to shake us loose continually from our purpose, or from all security and rest in it. Sin is but another name for self-direction. We cast off the will of God in it, and set up for a way and for objects of our own. We lay off plans to serve ourselves, and we mean to carry them straight through to their result. Whatever crosses us, or turns us aside, or in any way forbids us to do or succeed just as we like, becomes our annoyance. And these kinds of annoyance are so many and subtle and va rious, that the very world seems to be contrived to baffle us. In one view it is. It would not do for us, having cast off the will of God, and set up our own will, to let us get on smoothly and never feel any friction or collision with the will cast off. Therefore God manages to turn us about, beat us back, empty us from vessel to vessel, and make us feel that our bad will is hedged about, after all, by his Almighty purposes. Sometimes we seem to bend, sometimes to break. Be it one or the other, we lose a |