Jeremiah was of priestly descent, and born at Anathoth, a Levitical city a few miles northeast of Jerusalem. His commission was given him in very early life, and continued through the reigns of five kings for forty troubled years. He had neither wife nor child. His love was concentrated on his people, who ill requited it. The men of Anathoth sought his life. He was assailed with misrepresentation, bitter persecution, and murderous hate. He nearly lost his life under the displeasure of the king and princes, at whose command he was cast into G miry dungeon. He lived to see a faint gleam of returning prosperity overcast by the crimes of Ishmael and his fellow-conspirators.

He was a sensitive, delicately organized man, to whom it must have been a matter of peculiar trial to be called upon to play so prominent a part in those dark and stormy times, and to be ‘‘as an iron and brazen wall against the whole land.’’ But he is an evidence of what may be done by a man in whom the Spirit of God resides in mighty, living force. Tradition states that he died in Egypt, stoned by his fellow-countrymen. It has been often said that there are few Old Testament saints who afford more points of likeness to our Lord than does Jeremiah.