The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE THEME 93
of national life and union, strength and glory. But
another and a higher meaning was beginning to gather
about the word Jerusalem, a meaning which has come
in course of time to give this city a place quite
solitary and unrivalled in all history. Jerusalem is
now revered as the religious centre of the world's
life. Even in this early age she was beginning to
earn her lofty character. Josiah's reformation had so
far succeeded that the temple of Solomon had been
pronounced the centre of the worship of Jehovah.
Then these elegies bear witness to the importance of
the national festivals, which were all held at the capital,
and which were all of a religious nature. It is impos-
sible to conjecture what would have been the course
of the religious history of the world if Jerusalem had
been blotted out for ever at this period of the life of
the city. More than five centuries later Jesus Christ
declared that the time had come when neither at the
Samaritan mountain nor at Jerusalem should men
worship the Father, because God is spirit and can only
be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Thus the possi-
bility of this spiritual worship which was independent
of the sanctity of any place was a question of time.
The time for it had only just arrived when our Lord
made His great declaration. Of course the calendar
could not rule this matter ; it was not essentially an
affair of dates. But the world required all those inter-
vening ages to ripen into fitness for the lofty act of
purely spiritual worship ; and even then the great
advance was not made by a process of simple develop-
ment. It was necessary for Christ to come, both to
reveal the higher nature of worship by revealing the
higher nature of Him who was the object of worship,
and also to bestow the spiritual grace through which