3 4 the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart. cense. 6 CHAP. IV. 2 BEHOL HOLD, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankinThou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee. 8 Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. 10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! 11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. 12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. 18 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, 14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: 15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. 16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. CHAP. V. I I AM come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. I sleep, but my heart waketh it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? V. 2-3. There is a great difference between the decay of a sincere soul, and that of a hypocrite. The sincere soul does not decline, as the hypocrite does, out of an inward dislike of the ways of God. He sleeps,' it may be, but his heart waketh; that is, he is not pleased with his present declining state, but heartily wishes he were out of it; as one that hath a great desire to rise and be at his work, his heart is awake, but he is not able at present to shake off that sleep which binds him down. If the case be thus with thee, reader, thou art no hypocrite.-Gurnall. It is very hard work, and a very awkward business, to recover the activity of grace when once lost, and to revive a duty in disuse; 'I have put off my coat,' saith the Spouse. She had given way to a lazy distemper, was laid upon her bed of sloth, and how hard it is to raise her! Her Beloved is at the door, beseeching her by all the means of love, which might bring to her remembrance the near relation between them; 'My sister, my love, my dove, open to Me;' and yet she riseth not. He tells her, His locks are filled with the drops of the night; yet she stirs not. What is the matter? Her coat was off, and she is loth to put it on; she had given way to her sloth, and now she knows not how to shake it off; she could have been glad to have had the company of her Beloved, if Himself would have opened the door; and He desired as much hers, if she would rise to let Him in; and on these terms they part.Ibid. My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. By thy watchfulness, Christian, thou shalt invite such company in unto thee, as will make the time short and sweet; and that is thy precious Saviour, whose sweet communication and discourse, about the things of thy Father's kingdom, will prevent thy grudging the ease which sleepy Christians get, with the loss of such a heavenly entertainment as thou enjoyest. Who had not, that loves his soul better than his body, rather have David's song, than David's sleep in the night? And who had not rather have Christ's comforting presence with a waking soul, than His absence with a sleepy, slothful one? It is the watchful soul that Christ delights to be with, and open His heart to. We do not choose that for the time of giving our friends a visit, when they are asleep in their beds; nay, if we be with them, and perceive they grow sleepy, we think it is time to leave them to their pillow; and, verily, Christ doth so too. Christ withdraws from the Spouse, till she be better awake, as a fitter time for her to receive His loves. Put the sweetest wine into a sleepy man's hand, and you are likely to have it spilled; yea, put a purse of gold into his hand, and the man will hardly remember in the morning what you gave him over night. Thus in the sleepy state of a soul, both the Christian loseth the benefit, and Christ the praise of His mercy, and therefore Christ will stay to give out His choice favours, till the soul is more wakeful, that He may both do the creature good, and His creature speak well of Him for it.-Gurnall. 7 The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us? 10 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. My Beloved is white and ruddy,' saith the Spouse; -ruddy in death, and by bloodshed; white by innocence and the purity of that blood.-Leigh ton. Come and see, believing souls! look apon the dead Jesus in His winding sheet by faith, and say, 'Lo! this is He of whom the Church said, 'My Beloved is white and ruddy:' His ruddiness is now gone, and a death-pallor hath prevailed over all His body, but still He is as lovely as ever-yea, altogether lovely.'-Flavel. "His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. 12 His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly sent. 18 His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. 16 His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. V. 16. 'He is altogether lovely.'When we have borrowed metaphors from every creature that hath any excellency or lovely property in it, till we have stript the whole creation bare of all its ornaments, and clothed Christ with all this glory; when we have even worn out our tongues in ascribing praises to Him, alas! we have done next to nothing, when all this is done! -Flavel. What a heathen said of moral virtue, we may much more say of Christ, that were He to be seen with mortal eyes, He would compel love and admiration from all men, for He is altogether lovely.'-Ibid. The world never saw but one character in whom all the varieties of intellectual and moral greatness centred; blending in that Divine and ravishing harmony which may be termed the music of the soul. There never was but one who reconciled the extremes of universal excellence; in whom the vastest intellect and the tenderest 15 sensibility, the calmest judgment and the keenest feelings, co-existed without disturbing one another; in whom magnanimity was not tinctured with pride; in whom humility was never meanness; whose charity was never consumed by the fierce fire of zeal, nor an honest zeal damped by the excess of charity; whose pity for the wretched never mitigated abhorrence of vice, nor the sternest regard for the majesty of Truth diminished the most touching compassion for human frailty; in a word, in whom greatness and lowliness courage and fortitude, zeal and patience, incorruptible truth and more than human gentleness, and a thousand opposite virtues more, were Divinely attempered; uniting the various rays of moral excellence in one glorious emanation of wisdom and of love. That character was Jesus Christ, in whom dwelt, indeed, all the fulness of the Godhead; and whose humanity was but a veil through which streamed in softened radiance, the otherwise in sufferable effulgence of Deity. Any merely human character approximates towards perfection, just as he approaches or recedes from this great example.-Henry Rogers. Never was there a character at the same time so magnificent and unlaboured; so conscious of greatness and so unostentatiously simple; so full of inspiration to the good, and so free from terror, so replete with encouragement to the outcast penitent. In His character met the whole constellation of the virtues, each one made brighter by contrast: but one overpowering sentiment softened and subjected them all to itself; one all-pervading law gave unity and harmony to His most opposite actions; interpreting all His words and looks; preventing Him, even in the most critical situations, from being at variance with Himself, or falling below His professed object;-and that sentiment, that law, was love.-Dr. J. Harris. The character of Jesus Christ stands alone. Art has admired the unparalleled picture; infidelity has pronounced it perfect; poetry has declared it unapproachable; romance has proclaimed it inimitable; philosophy has bent before it; faith has adored in its presence; demons have trembled to look upon it; angels have sung enraptured strains regarding it; and God has summoned the attention of all worlds to it, as the Pattern of perfection.-Dr. Leask. But how is it to be accounted for, that men, who seem enamoured with the beauty of virtue, should turn from it with perfect disgust, and even persecute it with rancour, when it appears in the most genuine colours ?-Milner. Enthusiastic imaginations and flights of unscriptural fancy we disapprove; we bitterly lament them, while we would treat them with candour wherever we have the pain of observing them; and we regard them as exceedingly remote from, and most prejudicial to the pure, spiritual, inward, and operative Religion of the Gospel: but we believe also that our Lord Jesus Christ is a fit and necessary object of love, in the estimation of every holy intellect; not in the way of carnal reveries, or pictures on the imagination, or visionary representations of a beautiful person and a smiling countenance-deplorable delusions and pretences, which have occasioned unspeakable injury to the cause of Religion, but on account of His Divine glory, His moral amiableness, His perfection of holiness and benignity.-Dr. J. P. Smith. CHAP. VI. WHITHER is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? 2 3 whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee. My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds. of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. 5 Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead. Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and there is not one barren among them. As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks. 8 There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her, and. 6 9 blessed her; yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her. 10 Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners? V. 9-10. When unity and peace is wanting, there can be no great matters enterprised-we cannot do much for God, nor much for one another. When the devil would hinder the bringing to pass of good in nations and churches, He divides their counsels. The devil has not to learn that maxim he hath taught the Machiavellians of the world-Divide et impera, 'divide and rule.' It is a united force that is formidable. Hence the Spouse is said to be but one, and the only one of her mother (v. 9). Hereupon it is said of her (v. 10) that she is terrible as an army with banners.' What can a divided army do, or a disordered army that have lost their banners, or, for fear or shame, thrown them away? In like manner, what can Christians do for Christ, and the enlarging of His dominions in the world, in bringing men from darkness to light, while themselves are divided and disordered?-Bunyan. There is an awful majesty that sits in the face of a man, while he lives; but if he once become a carcase, the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, and even the very worms of the earth, dare prey upon him. So it is with the Church. When it is dead, when Religion is become a mere piece of empty, spiritless formality, this makes it look but just like other parts of the world; they will say of it, 'What are they better than we?" The religion of Christians, if you look only to the external formalities of it, hath not so much of a superiority, but that it will be a disregarded thing with them who can easily distinguish between vivid religion and dead. But when the Spirit of the living God puts forth itself in discernible effects, and such as carry an awful aspect with them to the common reason of men, Religion then grows a venerable thing; and the very purpose of opposition and hostility is checked and countermanded, and even quite laid aside.— Howe. 11 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded. 12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. The Spouse affirms that, ere she was aware, her soul made her as the chariots of Amminadib. It so fell out, that when she had no thoughts, no design or purpose, for attendance on communion with Christ, that she was surprised into a readiness and willingness unto it. So it will be with them that love Him in sincerity. Their own souls, without previous designs or outward occasions, will frequently engage them in holy thoughts of Him; which is the most eminent character of a truly spiritual Christian.-Dr. Owen. The frequent actings of grace in this manner, exciting acts of faith, love, and complacency in God, are evi-dences of much strength and prevalency of it in the soul. And thus, also, is it with indwelling sin; ere the soul is aware, without any provo-cation or temptation, when it knows not, it is cast into a vain and foolish frame. Sin produceth its figments secretly in the heart, and prevents the mind's consideration of what it is about.-Ibid. Sometimes, I have touches which I would give the world might last, but, in an hour, they are gone!-Venn. 13 Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies." |