The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

ii.40-42.] THE RETURN 235
sin, time devoted to the discovery of our faults may be
exceedingly well spent.
Then while a certain kind of self-study is always
mischievous—the sickly habit of brooding over one's
feelings, it is to be observed that the elegist does not
recommend this. His language points in quite another
direction. It is not emotion but action that he is con-
cerned with. The searching is to be into our " ways,"
the course of our conduct. There is an objectivity in
this inquiry, though it is turned inward, that contrasts
strongly with the investigation of shadowy sentiments.
Conduct, too, is the one ground of the judgment of God.
Therefore the point of supreme importance to ourselves
is to determine whether conduct is right or wrong.
With this branch of self-examination we are not in so
much danger of falling into complete delusions as when
we are considering less tangible questions. Thus this
is at once the most wholesome, the most necessary,
and the most practicable process of introspection.
The particular form of conduct here referred to
should be noted. The word " ways " suggests habit
and continuity. These are more characteristic than
isolated deeds—short spasms of virtue or sudden falls
before temptation. The final judgment will be according
to the life, not its exceptional episodes. A man
lives his habits. He may be capable of better things,
he may be liable to worse ; but he is what he does
habitually. The world will applaud him for some out-
burst of heroism in which he rises for the moment above
the sordid level of his every-day life, or execrate him
for his shameful moment of self-forgetfulness ; and the
world will have this amount of justice in its action, that
the capacity for the occasional is itself a permanent attri-
bute, although the opportunity for the active working