The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

104 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
enforced idleness ; the girl-choristers whose voices
would ring through the porticoes in the old times, are
silent and desolate, for their mother, Jerusalem, is herself
" in bitterness."
In this part of the elegy our attention is directed to
the cessation of the happy national assemblies with
their accompaniment of public worship in songs of praise
for harvest and vintage and in the awful symbolism of
the altar. The name " Zion " was associated with two
things, festivity and worship. It was a happy privilege
for Israel to have had the inspired insight as well as the
courage of faith to realise the conjunction. Even v.'ith
the fuller light and larger liberty of Christianity it is
rarely acknowledged among us. Our services have too
much of the funeral dirge about them. The devout
Israelite reserved his dirge for the death of his worship.
It does not seem to have occurred to the poet that
anybody could come to regard worship as an irksome
duty from which he would gladly be liberated. Are we,
then, to suppose that the Israelites who practised the
crude cult that was prevalent before the Exile, even
among the true servants of Jehovah, were indeed more
devout than Christians who enjoy the privileges of their
richer revelation ? Scarcely so ; for it must be remem-
bered that we are called to a more spiritual and there-
fore a more difficult worship. Inward sincerity is here
of supreme importance ; if this is missing there is no
worship, and without it the miserable unreality becomes
inexpressibly wearisome. No doubt it is the failure to
reach the rare . altitude of its lofty ideal that makes
Christian worship to appear in the eyes of many to be a
melancholy performance. But this explanation should
not be permitted to obscure the fact that true, living,
spiritual worship must be a very delightful exercise