The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

i64 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
but it required generations of arid eighteenth century
sincerity in hterature to make the faculty of seeing
visions possible to the age of Burns and Shelley and
Wordsworth.
In religion this fatal effect of insincerity is terribly
apparent. The formalist can never become a prophet.
Creeds which were kindled in the fires of passionate
conviction will cease to be luminous when the faith
that inspired them has perished ; and then if they
are still repeated as dead words by false lips the
unreality of them will not only rob them of all
value, it will blind the eyes of the men and women
who are guilty of this falsehood before God, so that
no new vision of truth can be brought within their
reach. Here is one of the snares that attach themselves
to the privilege of receiving a heritage of teaching from
our ancestors. We can only avoid it by means of
searching inquests over the dead beliefs which a foolish
fondness has permitted to remain unburied, poisoning
the atmosphere of living faith. So long as the fact
that they are dead is not honestly admitted it will be
impossible to establish sincerity in worship ; and the
insincerity, while it lasts, will be an impassable barrier
to the advent of truth.
The elegist has laid his finger on the particular form
of untruth of which the Jerusalem prophets had been
guilty. They had not discovered her iniquity to the
daughter of Zion.^ Thus they had hastened her ruin
by keeping back the message that would have urged
their hearers to repentance. Some interpreters have
given quite a new t\irn to the last clause of the fourteenth
verse. Literally this states that the prophets have
11. 14.