The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

iii.22-4.] THE UNFAILING GOODNESS OF GOD 195
awakening shock. We have still to answer the question,
How could a man entertain two such conflicting currents
of thought in closest juxtaposition ?
In their very form and structure these touching
elegies reflect the mental calibre of their author. A
wooden soul could never have invented their move-
ments. They reveal a most sensitive spirit, a spirit
that resembles a finely strung instrument of music,
quivering in response to impulses from all directions.
People of a mercurial temperament live in a state of
perpetual oscillation between the most contrary moods,
and the violence of their despair is always ready to
give place to the enthusiasm of a new hope. We call
them inconsistent ; but their inconsistency may spring
from a quick-witted capacity to see two sides of a
question in the time occupied by slower minds with
the contemplation of one. As a matter of fact, however,
the revulsion in the mind of the poet may not have
been so sudden as it appears in his work. We can
scarcely suppose that so elaborate a composition as
this elegy was written from beginning to end at a
single sitting. Indeed, here we seem to have the
mark of a break. The author composes the first part
in an exceptionally gloomy mood, and leaves the poem
unfinished, perhaps for some time. When he returns
to it on a subsequent occasion he is in a totally different
frame of mind, and this is reflected in the next stage of
his work. Still the point of importance is the possibility
of the very diverse views here recorded.
Nor is this wholly a matter of temperament. Is it
not more or less the case with all of us, that since
absorption with one class of ideas entirely excludes
their opposites, when the latter are allowed to enter
the mind they will rush in with the force of a pent-up