unbreakable rock that has withstood the assaults and the disintegrating forces of the ages.  At first the survivors of the great catastrophe were stunned by the blow that had shattered their nation.  They lived only in their memories of the past and in their hopes for the future.  At last, in the long period of misery and enforced meditation, they began not only to accept but also to apply the eternal principles proclaimed by their earlier prophets.  Thus amidst these entirely new conditions they gained a broader and deeper faith and were still further trained for the divine task of teaching mankind.

II.  The Book of Lamentations.  After describing the destruction of the little kingdom established at Mizpah under Gedaliah, the Hebrew historical records suddenly become silent.  This silence is due to the fact that there was little of external interest to record.  The real history of this tragic half-century is the record of the anguish and doubts and hopes in the hearts of the scattered remnants of the race.  The little book of Lamentations expresses dramatically and pathetically the thoughts of the people as they meditated upon the series of calamities which gathered about the great catastrophe of 586 B.C.  Like the ancient Torah, or five books of the Law, it contains a quintet of poems.  These are very similar in theme and form to many of the psalms of the Psalter.  In the first four the characteristic five-beat measure, by which the deep emotions, especially that of sorrow, were expressed, is consistently employed.  Each of these four is also an acrostic, that is, each succeeding line or group of lines begins with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  This acrostic form was probably adopted in order to aid the memory, and suggests that from the first these poems were written to be used in public.  Even so the Jews of Jerusalem to-day chant them on each of their sabbaths beside the foundation walls of the great platform on which once stood their ruined temple.  Although the artificial character of these poems tends to check the free expression of thought and feeling, it is possible to trace in them a logical progress and to feel the influence of the strong emotions that inspired them.

III.  Authorship and Date of the Book.  In theme and literary form these poems are so strikingly similar to Jeremiah’s later sermons that it was almost inevitable that tradition should attribute them to the great prophet of Judah’s decline.  This tradition, to which is due the position of the book of Lamentations in the Greek and English Bibles, cannot be traced earlier than the Greek period.  The evidence within the poems themselves strongly indicates that they were not written by Jeremiah.  It is almost inconceivable that he would subject his poetic genius to the rigid limitations of the acrostic structure.  Moreover, he would never have spoken of the weak Zedekiah, whose vacillating policy he condemned, in the terms of high esteem which appear in Lamentations