The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

ii. 10-17.] THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN 151
should have known how many innocent victims would
be dragged into the vortex of misery if the course they
had chosen were to fail. The blind obstinacy of the
men who refused to listen to the warnings so emphatic-
ally pronounced by the great prophets of Jehovah, the
desperate self-will of these men, pitted against the
declared counsel of God, must bear the blame. It is
monstrous to charge the providence of God with the
consequences of actions that God has forbidden.
A second truth must be added, for there still remains
the difficulty that children are placed, by no choice of
their own, in circumstances that render them thus liable
to the effects of other people's sins and follies. We can
never understand human life if we persist in considering
each person by himself That we are members one of
another, so that if one member suffers all the members
suffer, is the law of human experience as well as the
principle of Christian churchmanship. Therefore we
must regard the wrongs of children that so disturb us
as part of the travail and woe of mankind. Bad as it
is in itself that these innocents should be thus involved
in the consequences of the misconduct of their elders, it
would not be any improvement for them to be cut off
from all connection with their predecessors in the great
family of mankind. Taken on the whole, the solidarity
of man certainly makes more for the welfare of child-
hood than for its disadvantage. And we must not think
of childhood alone, deeply as we are moved at the sight
of its unmerited sufferings. If children are part of the
race, whatever children endure must be taken as but
one element in the vast experience that goes to make
up the life-history of mankind.
All this is very vague, and if we offer it as a conso-
lation to a mother whose heart is torn with anguish at