Lamentations 1:1-12
“There is nothing like the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the whole world. There has been plenty of sorrow in every age, and in every land, but such another preacher and author, with such a heart for sorrow, has never again been born. Dante comes next to Jeremiah, and we know that Jeremiah was that exile’s favorite prophet.”
–Dr. Alexander Whyte
Laugh, and world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone:
For this sad old earth must borrow its Mirth,
But it has trouble enough of its own.
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A woman’s heart—tender and quick and warm;
But man’s in iron will and courage strong.
His harp was set to weird, pathetic song,
Yet when time called for deeds, no wrathful storm
From throne or altar could his soul disarm—
His disheartening battle fierce and long.
–Mrs. Elizabeth Cook
“Prisons are in the interest of the free. Hell is the safe-guard of heaven. A state that cannot punish crime is doomed and a God who tolerates evil is not good. Deny me my biblical revelation of the anger of God and I’m insecure in the universe. But reveal to me this throne established, occupied by One whose heart is full of tenderness; whose bowels yearn with love—then I am assured that He will not tolerate that which blights and blasts and damns, but will destroy it and all its instruments in the interest of that which is high and noble and pure.”
–G. Campbell Morgan
Lamentations 1:12—3:4
Laugh, and world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone:
For this sad old earth must borrow its Mirth,
But it has trouble enough of its own.
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I am the man sore smitten with the wrath
Of Him who fashioned me; my heart is faint,
And crieth out, “Spare, spare, O God! Thy saint”;
But yet with darkness doth He hedge my path.
My eyes with streams of fiery tears run down
To see the daughter of my people slain,
And in Jerusalem the godless reign.
Trouble on trouble are upon me thrown.
Mine adversaries clap their sinful hands
The while they hiss and wag their heads and say,
“Where is the temple but of yesterday—
The noblest city of a hundred lands?”
We do confess our guilt; then, Lord, arise,
Avenge, avenge us of our enemies!
–G. Smith
Jehova-Tsidkenu*
I oft read with pleasure
to soothe or engage
Isaiah’s wild measure
or John’s simple page.
But e’en when they pictured
the blood-sprinkled tree,
Jehovah-Tsidkenu was nothing to me.
Like tears from the daughters
of Zion that roll
I wept when the waters
went over His soul.
Yet thought not that my sins
had nailed to the tree
Jehovah-Tsidkenu was nothing to me.
When free grace awoke me
by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me
I trembled to die.
No refuge, no safety
in self could I see,
Jehovah-Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.
My terrors all vanished
before that sweet name.
My guilty fears banished,
with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain
life-giving and free,
Jehovah-Tsidkenu is all things to me.
–Robert Murry McCheyne
* “Jehovah-Tsidkenu”: “The Lord Our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6; Lamentations 2-5)
Lamentations 3:4—5:22
“If religious books are not circulated among the masses and the people do not turn to God, I do not know what is to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be. If God and His Word are not received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt through the length and breadth in the land, anarchy, misrule, degradation, misery, corruption, and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.”
–Daniel Webster
“America is coasting downhill on a godly ancestry, and God have mercy on us when we reach the bottom of the hill.”
–Dr. J. Gresham Machen
“We can go the way of Babylon because we’ve lost our moral purpose.”
–Dr. Albert Hyma
“The longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of the truth that God governs in the affairs of men.”
–Benjamin Franklin
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