The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

i.8-ii.] STN AND SUFFERING 115
sion in the present tense as it stands in the Authorised
English Version. The poet cannot mean that the Jews
in exile and captivity have already forgotten the recent
horrors of the siege of Jerusalem. This would be flatly
contrary to the motive of the elegy, which is to give
tongue to the sufferings of the Jews flowing out of
that disaster. It would be impossible to say that the
calamity that inspired the elegy was no longer even
remembered by its victims. What an anti-climax this
would be ! Clearly the poet is bewailing the culpable
folly of the people in not giving a thought to the certain
consequences of such a course as they were following ;
a course that had been denounced by the faithful
prophets of Jehovah, who, alas ! had been but voices
crying in the wilderness, unnoted, or even scouted and
suppressed, like the stormy petrels hated by sailors as
birds of ill-omen. In her ease and prosperity, her self-
indulgence and sin, the doomed city had failed to
recollect what must be the end of such things. The
idea of remembrance is peculiarly apt and forcible in
this connection, although it has a relation to the future,
because the Jews had been through experiences which
should have served as warnings if they had duly
reflected on them. This was not a matter for wild
guesses or vague apprehensions. Not only were there
the distinct utterances of Jeremiah and his predecessors
to rouse the thoughtless ; events had been speaking
louder than words. Jerusalem was already a city with
a history, and that history had even by this time accu-
mulated some tragic lessons. These were subjects for
memory. Thus memory can become prophecy, because
the laws which are revealed in the past will govern
the future. We are none of us so wholly inexperienced
but that in the knowledge of what we have already