The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

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THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
No sneer when words are harsh,
Because it puts its treasure and its joy in heaven,
Where nothing fades,"
The explanation of this sudden turn is to be found
in the fact that for the moment the poet forgets
himself and his surroundings in a rapt contemplation
of God. This is the glory of adoration, the very
highest form of prayer, that prayer in which a man
comes nearest to the condition ascribed to angels and
the spirits of the blessed who surround the throne and
gaze on the eternal light. It is not to be thought of as
an idle dreaming like the dreary abstraction of the
Indian fanatic who has drilled himself to forget the
outside world by reducing his mind to a state of vacancy
while he repeats the meaningless syllable Om, or the
senseless ecstasy of the monk of Mount Athos, who has
attained the highest object of his ambition when he
thinks he has beheld, the sacred light within his own
body. It is self-forgetful, not self-centred ; and it is
occupied with the contemplation of those great truths
of the being of God, absorption in which is an inspir-
ation. Here the worshipper is at the river of the water
of life, from which if he drinks he will go away refreshed
for the battle like the Red-cross knight restored at the
healing fountain. It is the misfortune of our own age
that it is impractical in the excess of its practicalness
when it has not patience for those quiet, calm experi-
ences of pure worship which are the very food of the
soul.
The continuance of the throne of God is the idea
that now lays hold of the elegist as he turns his
thoughts from the miserable scenes of the ruined city
to the glory above. This is brought home to his con-
sciousness by the fleeting nature of all things earthly.
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