The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

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THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
cast them off. Then it must be that He will respond
and turn them back to Himself. If our hope is only
conditioned by the question whether God has utterly
forsaken us it is perfectly safe, because the one imagin-
able cause of shipwreck can never arise. There is but
one thing that might make our trust iti God vain and
fruitless ; and that one thing is impossible, nay, in-
conceivable. So wide and deep is our Father's love, so
firm is the adamantine strength of His eternal fidelity,
we may be absolutely confident that, though the moun-
tains be removed and cast into the sea, and though the
solid earth melt away beneath our feet. He will still
abide as the Eternal Refuge of His children, and there-
fore that He will never fail to welcome all who seek
His grace to help them return to Him in true penitence
and filial trust. Thus we are led even by this most
melancholy book in the Bible to see, as with eyes
purged by tears, that the love of God is greater than
the sorrow of man, and His redeeming power more
mighty than the sin which lies at the root of the worst
of that sorrow, the eternity of His throne, in spite of
the present havoc of evil in the universe, assuring us
that the end of all will be .not a mournful elegy, but
a paean of victory.