The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

iv. 17-28.] VAIN HOPES 291
throne by the authority of Christ ; but the papacy was
really put in the place of Christ. Similarly people
who trust in the Church, their City of God, rather
than in her Lord, have fallen into an error like that
of the Jews, who put confidence in their city rather
than in their God. So have those who confide in their
own election instead of looking to the Divine Sovereign
who, they declare, has named them in His eternal
decrees ; and those again who set reliance on their
religion, its rites and creeds ; and lastly, those who
trust in their very faith as itself a saving power. In
all these cases, the city, the Pope, the election, the
Church, the religion, the faith are simply idols, no more
able to protect the superstitious people who put them
in the place of God than the ark that was captured in
battle when the Jews tried to use it as a talisman, or
even the fish-god Dagon that lay shattered before it in
the Philistine temple.
But now we find the old-established faith in Jerusalem
so far undermined that it has to be supplemented
by other grounds of hope. In particular there are two
of these—the king and a foreign ally. The ally is
mentioned first because the poet starts from the time
when men still hoped that the Egyptians would espouse
the cause of Israel, and come to the help of the
little kingdom against the hosts of Babylon. There
was much to be said in favour of this expectation.
In the past Egypt had been in alliance with the
people now threatened. The two great kingdoms of
the Nile and the Euphrates were rivals; and the
aggressive policy of Babylon had brought her into
conflict with Egypt. The Pharaohs might be glad to
have Israel preserved as a " bufl:er state." Indeed,
negotiations had been carried on with that end in view.