due submission to the judgment that has befallen them, to lead once more to God those who would not let themselves be brought to Him through his previous testimony regarding that judgment while it was yet impending. The Jewish synagogue has recognised and duly estimated the importance of the Lamentations in these respects, by appointing that the book should be read on the anniversary of the destruction of the temple. A like appreciation has been made by the Christian Church, which, rightly perceiving that the Israelitish community is the subject in these poems, attributed to them a reference to the church militant; and, viewing the judgment on the people of God as a prophecy of the judgment that came on Him who took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, it has received a portion of the Lamentations into the ritual for the Passion Week, and concludes each of these lessons with the words, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum, deum tuum." Cf. The Passion Week in its Ceremonies and Prayers, Spires 1856, and the Officium hebdomadae sanctae, a reprinted extract from Dr. Reischl's Passionale, Münich 1857. The motives for this choice are so far set forth by Allioli (in Neumann, ii. S. 486) in the following terms: "The church wished believers to see, in the great punishments which God had ordained against Jerusalem by the instrumentality of Nebuchadnezzar, the still more severe chastisement that God has brought on Israel after the dreadful murder of the Messias. She seeks to bewail the unhappy condition of the blinded nation, once favoured with the divine revelation. In the fall of Jerusalem, she seeks to deplore the evil that has come on herself from external and internal foes, the persecution of brother by brother, the havoc made by false teachers, the looseness of opinions, the sad advances made by indifference in matters of faith and by the corruption of morals. In the devastation and the penalties inflicted on Jerusalem, she wishes to present for consideration the destruction which comes on every soul that dies the death in sins. In the condition of the ruined city and the homeless nation, she seeks to make men bewail the homeless condition of the whole race, who have fallen into decay and disorder through Adam's sin. And lastly, in the nation visited with punishment, she seeks to set forth Jesus Christ Himself,
