But even Jeremiah, when he was denouncing the evils that would befall his country, had a saving clause in his gloomy predictions.  All manner of evils would befall them unless they repented, and humanly speaking he was of the opinion that they couldn’t repent.  Said he:  “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.”  Nevertheless this did not prevent him from continually exhorting them to do good, and blaming them when they didn’t do it.  Like all great moral teachers he acted on the assumption that there is more freedom of will than seemed theoretically possible.  It was the same way with his views of national affairs.  Jeremiah’s reputation is that of a pessimist.  Still, when the country was in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and he was in prison for predicting it, he bought a piece of real estate which was in the hands of the enemy.  He considered it a good investment.  “I subscribed the deed and sealed it, and called witnesses and weighed him the money in the balances.”  Then he put the deeds in an earthen vessel, “that they may continue many days.”  For in spite of the panic that his own words had caused, he believed that the market would come up again.  “Houses and vineyards shall yet be bought in this land.”  If I were an archaeologist with a free hand, I should like to dig in that field in Anathoth in the hope of finding the earthen jar with the deed which Hanameel gave to his cousin Jeremiah, for a plot of ground that nobody else would buy.

It is the moralists and the reformers who have after all the most cheerful message for us.  They are all the time threatening us, yet for our own good.  They see us plunging heedlessly to destruction.  They cry, “Look out!” They often do not themselves see the way out, but they have a well-founded hope that we will discover a way when our attention is called to an imminent danger.  The fact that the race has survived thus far is an evidence that its instinct for self-preservation is a strong one.  It has a wonderful gift for recovering after the doctors have given it up.

The saving clause is a great help to those idealists who are inclined to look unwelcome facts in the face.  It enables them to retain faith in their ideals, and at the same time to hold on to their intellectual self-respect.

There are idealists of another sort who know nothing of their struggles and self-contradictions.  Having formed their ideal of what ought to be, they identify it with what is.  For them belief in the existence of good is equivalent to the obliteration of evil.  Their world is equally good in all its parts, and is to be viewed in all its aspects with serene complacency.