produce in English.
Here it is necessary only to emphasise the variety of these forms, the
irregularities which are found in them, and the occasional passage of the
Prophet from verse to prose and from prose to verse, after the manner of
some other bards or rhapsodists of his race. The reader will keep in mind
that what appear as metrical irregularities on the printed page would not
be felt to be so when sung or chanted; just as is the case with the
folk-songs of Palestine to-day. I am well aware that metres so primitive
and by our canons so irregular have been more rhythmically rendered by the
stately prose of our English Versions; yet it is our duty reverently to
seek for the original forms and melodies of what we believe to be the
Oracles of God. The only other point connected with the metrical
translations offered, which need be mentioned here, is that I have
rendered the name of the God of Israel as it is by the Greek and our own
Versions--The Lord--which is more suitable to English verse than is either
Yahweh or Jehovah.

The text of the Lectures and the footnotes show how much I owe to those
who have already written on Jeremiah, as also in what details I differ
from one or another of them.

I have retained the form of Lectures for this volume, but I have very much
expanded and added to what were only six Lectures of an hour each when
delivered under the auspices of the Baird Trust in Glasgow in 1922.

George Adam Smith.

CHANONRY LODGE,
OLD ABERDEEN,
_18th October, 1923._

PRELIMINARY.

First of all, I thank the Baird Trustees for their graceful appointment to
this Lecture of a member of what is still, though please God not for long,
another Church than their own. I am very grateful for the privilege which
they grant me of returning to Glasgow with the accomplishment of a work
the materials for which were largely gathered during the years of my
professorship in the city. The value of the opportunity is enhanced by all
that has since befallen our nation and the world. The Great War invested
the experience of the Prophet, who is the subject of this Lecture, with a
fresh and poignant relevance to our own problems and duties. Like
ourselves, Jeremiah lived through the clash not only of empires but of
opposite ethical ideals, through the struggles and panics of small
peoples, through long and terrible fighting, famine, and slaughter of the
youth of the nations, with all the anxieties to faith and the