THERE were pious men before Jeremiah, but the long drawn out struggle of his life revealed piety more than ever before. Very different judgments have been passed on his natural character. . . . The contrasts revealed in his life have been epigrammatically expressed by calling him a figure "cast in brass, dissolving in tears." ... He was in the cruelest dilemma. If he pleaded for the people it was to be false to Jehovah, to be false to his own convictions of truth, false to what he knew to be the irrevocable will of God. On the other hand, to threaten, above all to threaten with zeal for God, was treason against his own heart and against his people. Thus both God and men seemed to reject him. But his repulse by men drove him to God, and his repulse by God made him press closer to Him. And thus his life became a fellowship with God, his thoughts and his feelings a dialogue between him and God.
—From Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible."
