EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ד) Lamentations 1:4 introduces another view personifying the religious condition: not the banished people, not the fallen city, but the dwelling-place of the Holy One of Israel is forsaken and overthrown. The ways of Zion, not the streets in Jerusalem leading up to the Temple, but the roads from all quarters of the land, which found their termini in the Holy hill, are mournful, for they are entirely deserted; being without those who go to a solemn assembly, none come to appear before the Lord in His courts at set times, as He had enjoined His worshippers to do; all her gates, which Jehovah loveth, are desolate, broken down; no one goes up to or lingers about them. The Temple has lost its sanctity and is open to all intruders. The glory has departed from it: her priests are sighing; her virgins are afflicted. “The reason why the priests and the virgins are here conjoined is that lamentation is made over the cessation of the religious feasts. The virgins are here considered as those who enlivened the national festivals by playing, singing, and dancing (Psalms 68:26; Jeremiah 31:13)” (Keil). And she is in bitterness herself, as if all was lost religiously as well as politically.
HOMILETICS
LAMENTATION OVER A FORSAKEN SANCTUARY
I. Because its thoroughfares are no longer thronged with worshippers. “The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts; all her gates are desolate.” Those were happy days when the roads leading up to Jerusalem were crowded with eager worshippers, coming to the three great annual festivals—the Passover, Pentecost, and Feast of Tabernacles. The city was jubilant in song, and full to overflowing with life and movement. Now the very roads are represented as mourning, as if they missed the tread of the pilgrims’ feet; and the gates look in vain for the travellers they had so often welcomed. “All her gates are desolate.”
It is a dispiriting spectacle to see a closed sanctuary, with weeds and grasses growing about the entrance; the more so when we have seen the same sanctuary filled with delighted worshippers. When men forsake the house of God, God forsakes it too, and it is then desolate indeed.
II. Because the office of the ministry is obsolete. “Her priests sigh”—sigh not only for want of bread, because the offerings, which were their means of livelihood, fail; but because their life-work is useless, because the people lapse into ignorance and sin, because the worship of Jehovah is neglected and dishonoured. The true minister is wholly consecrated to his sacred calling; it is the theme of his earnest prayers, his constant study, and exercises his best powers. Life to him is bereft of its holiest motive, its sweetest relish, when it is baulked of its loftiest purpose. “It is time to sigh when the priests, the Lord’s ministers, sigh.”
III. Because the training of the young is neglected. “Her virgins are afflicted.” The virgins are mentioned because they took a prominent part in all religious festivals (Jeremiah 31:13; Exodus 15:20; Psalms 68:25); and therefore special notice is taken of the educative loss to them occasioned by disused ordinances. Neglect in the religious training of the young means grave peril to the moral stamina of the community. Religion is the mightiest force in the formation of youthful character. The men and women of the future will be what the Church makes them in their younger years. It has been said—“People fancy that we cannot become wise without becoming old also; but in truth, as years accumulate, it is hard to keep as wise as we were. Man becomes, in the different stages of his life, a different being, but he cannot say that he will surely be better as he grows onwards. In certain matters he is as likely to be right in his twentieth as in his sixtieth year.” The young will carry with them through life the influences for good or evil that have been brought to bear upon them in their early days.
IV. Because the city is deprived of religious ordinances. “And she is in bitterness.” It is a beautiful and touching conception to impersonate the metropolis of Judah as a disconsolate female, troubled with the evident cessation of Divine worship and the universal neglect of religious duties. As is the Church, so will be the city; as is the state of religion, so will be the people. The glory of a city is gone when religious ordinances are abandoned. No loss should be lamented more bitterly than the loss of religion.
LESSONS.—
1. A closed temple anywhere is a pitiable sight.
2. Where religious privileges are withdrawn the people suffer.
3. Love of worship will always crowd the sanctuary.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 1:4. “Her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted.” A dispirited ministry.
1. Because the sanctuary is destroyed.
2. Because the worshippers are scattered and uncared for.
3. Because its maintenance is withdrawn.
4. Because the joyous song of the young is turned to sorrow. “Her virgins are afflicted.”
5. Because of conscious imperfections and unfaithfulness.
—“She is in bitterness.” A city in sorrow.
1. Because its reputation is dishonoured.
2. Because its resources are crippled, its people dispersed, its commerce interrupted, its institutions destroyed.
3. Because the public worship of God is abandoned.
4. Because its future seems hopeless.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Dead and dying Churches. A barque on her voyage from Hong-Kong fell in with a British ship, the “Guiding Star,” helplessly floating about with a fever-stricken crew. When found, only one member of the crew was able to work. The captain, the first mate, the steward, and a seaman had died. Five men were lying helpless, though still alive, and the boatswain had gone mad from the want of proper attention. The “Guiding Star” was towed to Batavia, where the survivors were placed under medical treatment. Are there not Churches to-day that are morally in a similar plight—drifting hospitals, officered with the dead and dying! It will be a mercy if they are spiritually rescued before they become sepulchres, entombing the hopelessly dead.—The Scottish Pulpit.
The true man superior to his surroundings.—The scientist, while admitting the influence of geographical surroundings in shaping the history and character of nations, admits that nothing would be more erroneous than to suppose that Nature alone acts in determining the conditions of life and of races. Man’s activity must be associated with Nature. A country may be prominent and fertile, and yet occupied by a race of men utterly unfit to develop its resources. After all, man is greater than Nature, and it is his lofty mission to subdue it. The energy of the Netherlands turned a swamp into a garden, while their Spanish oppressors, with inexhaustible resources in soil and mineral, sank into decay. We are apt to lay too much stress upon the operation of the law of environment, and to ignore individual responsibility. Plant within man the vital principles of Christianity, and he will soon change his environment.—The Scottish Pulpit.
Ministers not only finger-posts, but guides. There ought to be no hiatus between our declarations and our spiritual conduct. We must not only be finger-posts, but guides, “Lest having preached to others, we ourselves become castaways.”
“The love of Christ and His Apostles twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himself.”
If we are the channels of good to our fellows, it behoves us to clear away all that might impede the flowing, and defile the purity, of the stream of truth from God.
Youth needs instruction. Narcissus, a beautiful youth, though he would not love them that loved him, yet afterwards fell in love with his own shadow. Ah! how many young men in these days, who were once lovely and hopeful, are now fallen in love with their own and others’ shadows, with high, empty, airy notions, and with strange, monstrous speculations, to their own damnation. A youth deprived of instruction and left to his natural development is a pitiable object, and is menaced by many perils.
Work a remedy for misery. Nothing is more remarkable in the Apostles than their unbroken mental health. The histories of religious communities are full of instances of ecstasies and hysterical delusions; but never do we find among our Lord’s followers anything approaching to a spiritual craze. This health of theirs came in great measure from their being constantly employed about matters of which their hearts were full. The busy man has neither time nor inclination to nurse delusive fancies. Hard, honest, practical work is a panacea for many ills. Underneath a fresco of the 13th century discovered at Cortona, in Italy, is inscribed the motto, Sum misero nisi teneam ligonem—I am miserable unless I hold a spade.—The Scottish Pulpit.
The uses of suffering.
“Through long days did Anguish,
And sad nights did Pain
Forge my shield, Endurance,
Bright and free from stain.
Doubt in misty caverns,
’Mid dark horrors sought,
Till my peerless jewel,
Faith, to me she brought.
Sorrow that I wearied
Should remain so long,
Wreathed my starry glory,
The bright crown of song.
Strife, that racked my spirit
Without hope or rest,
Left the blooming flower,
Patience, in my breast.”
—Proctor.
Love in sorrow. Always through the darkest part of every life there runs, though we may sometimes fail to see it, the golden thread of love, so that even the worst man on earth is not wholly cut off from God, since He will, by some means or other, eternally try to draw him out of death into life. We are astounded now and then to read that some cold-blooded murderer, some man guilty of a hideous crime, will ask in his last moments to see a child who loved him devotedly, and whom he also loved. We are astonished just because we do not understand the untiring heart of the Almighty Father, who in His goodness often gives to the vilest sinner the love of a pure-hearted woman or child. So true is the beautiful old Latin saying, Mergere nos patitur, sed non submergere Christus—Christ lets us sink, may be, but not drown.—Edna Lyall.
A city in sorrow. In 1576 Antwerp was stormed by the Spaniards with fire and sword. Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even in the blood-stained annals of the Netherlands. In the course of three days eight thousand human beings were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to cast off even the vizard of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of its fiends. Night fell upon the scene before the soldiers were masters of the city; but worse horrors began after the contest was ended. This army of brigands had come thither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was not blood thirst, nor lust, nor revenge which impelled them, but greediness for gold. Torture was employed to discover hidden treasure; and, after all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, the proprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposed dissimulation. Women, children, and old men were killed in countless numbers, and still, through all this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling throng, suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of the conflict, there sounded, every half-quarter of every hour, as if in gentle mockery, from the belfry of the cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes.—Motley’s “Dutch Republic.”