The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE THEME 95
We may look at the subject from two points of view.
First, faith in God encourages the hope that such a
destiny as is here foreshadowed should not be allowed
to fail. So felt the prophets who were permitted to
read the counsels of God by inspired insight into the
eternal principles of His nature. These men were sure
that Jerusalem must rise again from her ashes because
they knew for a certainty that her Lord would not let
His purposes concerning her be frustrated.
Then even with the limited vision which is all that
can be attained from the lower platform of historical
criticism, we may see that Jerusalem had acquired such
an immortal place in the estimation of the Jews, that
the people must have clung to the idea of a restora-
tion till it was realised. To say this is to shew that
the realisation could not but be accomplished. Such
passionate regrets as those of the Lamentations are
seeds of hope.
May we go one step further ? Is not every true and
deep regret a prophecy of restoration ? There is an
irrecoverable past, it must be owned. That is to say,
the days that are gone cannot return, nor can deeds
once done ever be undone ; the future will never be an
exact repetition of the past. But all this does not
forbid the assurance that there may be genuine re-
storation. Jerusalem restored was very unlike the
city whose fate the elegist bewailed ; nevertheless she
was restored, and that with her essential characteristics
more pronounced than ever. Henceforth she was to
be most completely what her earlier history had only
faintly adumbrated—the typical seat of religion. Thus,
though the Lamentations are not at all cheering or
prophetic in tone, or even in intention, but the very
reverse, wholly mournful and despondent, we may