We will this evening read in the one Book of the Bible which is wholly given up to fellowship; I allude to the Book of Canticles. This Book stands like the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and no man shall ever be able to pluck its fruit, and eat thereof, until first he has been brought by Christ past the sword of the cherubim, and led to rejoice in the love which hath delivered him from death. The Song of Solomon is only to be comprehended by the men whose standing is within the vail. The outer-court worshippers, and even those who only enter the court of the priests, think the Book a very strange one; but they who some very near to Christ can often see in this Song of Solomon the only expression which their love to their Lord desires.Son 1:1-2. The song of songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.The Person here alluded to is not named; this omission is very common and usual to all-absorbing love. The spouse is thinking so much of Christ Jesus her Lord that it is not necessary for her to name him; she cannot make a mistake, and she is so oblivious of all besides, that she does not think of them, nor of those who would ask, “Who is this of whom you speak?” The communion is so close between herself and her Lord that his name is left out: “Let him kiss me.” By the kiss is to be understood that strange and blessed manifestation of love which Christ gives from himself to his children. Inasmuch as the word “kisses” is in the plural, the spouse asks that she may have the favor multiplied; and inasmuch as she mentions the “mouth” of her Bridegroom, it is because she wishes to receive the kisses fresh and warm from his sacred person. “For thy love is better than wine.” It is better in itself, for it is more costly. Did it not flow out in streams of blood from a better winepress than earth’s best wine hath ever known? It is better, too, in its effects; more exhilarating, more strengthening, and it leaves no ill results.Son 1:3. Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.The spouse surveys all the attributes of Christ, and she compares them to separate and precious ointments. Christ is anointed as Prophet, Priest and King, and in each of these anointings he is a source of sweetness and fragrance to his people. But as if jealous of herself for having talked of the “ointments” when she should have spoken of him, she seems to say, “Thy very name is as an alabaster box when it is opened, and the odour of the precious spikenard fills the room.” “Jesus, the very thought of thee With sweetness fills my breast.” “Thy name is as ointment poured forth,” and the spouse addeth, as a note of commendation, “therefore do the virgins love thee.”Son 1:4. Draw me, we will run after thee:She feels, perhaps, as you do now, beloved brethren, heavy of heart; she cannot fly, nor go to reach her Lord; but her heart longs after him, so she cries, “Draw me, we will run after thee.” While she prays the prayer others feel it suitable to them also, so they join with her. When Christ draws us, we do not walk, but “run” after him; there is no heavy going then. When Christ draws us, how swiftly do we fly, as the dove to the dove-cote, when Jesus’ grace enticeth us. Running soon brings the spouse to her Lord; for notice the next clause: —Son 1:4. The king hath brought me into his chambers:It is done: “The King hath brought me into his chambers.” Come you to him in prayer, and mayhap, while you are yet speaking, he will hear; while you are musing, the fire shall burn, and you shall be able to say, “Yes, he has brought me near to himself, to the retired chamber where I may be alone with him, to the chamber of riches and delights, where I may feast with him.”Son 1:4. We will be glad and rejoice in thee,This is the sure result of getting into the inner chamber with Christ.Son 1:4. We will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.Not only the just in heart, those pure and lowly ones who, whithersoever the Lamb doth lead, from his footsteps ne’er depart, but the upright, those who love moral excellence and virtue, they must love Christ. Now the singer’s note changeth: —Son 1:5. I am black,Ah, my soul, how true is that of thee! “I am black,” —Son 1:5. But comely,Oh, glorious faith, that can, through the blackness, still see the comeliness! We are comely when covered with the righteousness of Christ, though black in ourselves. “I am black, but comely,” —Son 1:5. O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar,Smoke-dried, foul, filthy, poverty-stricken.Son 1:5. As the curtains of Solomon.Bedecked with embroidery made with gold and silver threads, and fit for a king’s tent, so strangely mixed is the nature of the believer: “black but comely,” ... “as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.”Son 1:6. Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me:Perhaps you are afraid, beloved, that the Master should look at you, for you feel yourself so unworthy.Son 1:6. My mother’s children were angry with me;You have been persecuted until your spirit is broken.Son 1:6. They made me the keeper of the vineyards;Perhaps you have been put to some ignoble work; you have toiled under the whip of the law; but you have a worse sorrow even than this, for you have to add: —Son 1:6. But mine own vineyard have I not kept.You are conscious that you have restrained prayer, that you have neglected searching the Word, that you have not lived as near to God as you ought to have done; and all this seems to make you feel as if you could not come into close communion with Christ. Come, my brother, my sister, shake off your unbelief, may the Master shake it off from you! Then once again you can change the note, as the spouse does here: —Son 1:7. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?There are other shepherds, though they are false ones, and these pretend to be companions of Christ; but why should we turn aside to them? And yet we shall, O our Beloved One, unless thou dost tell us where to follow thee, and how to abide close by thy side, or dost tell us where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon! Here comes the answer: —Son 1:8. If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,-Just note that; she said that she was black, but Christ says that she is the fairest among women; in fact, there is a passage in the Song where he twice over calls her fair; as Erskine puts it, — “Lo! thou art fair, lo! thou art fair, Twice fair art thou, I say; My grace, my righteousness becomes Thy doubly-bright array.” O ye faithful ones, what joy is contained in this encomium which your Lord gives to you!” If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, —Son 1:8. Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.There are two ways of finding Christ; first, follow after true believers; most of you know some experienced Christians; follow their footsteps, and you shall so find their God. Or else, go to the shepherds’ tents; wait on the ministry of the Word; the Lord is often pleased to manifest himself to his people when they are willing to hear what messages he sends through his ambassadors.Son 1:9. I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots.True believers are as strong, as noble, as beautiful as the horses in Pharaoh’s chariot, which were renowned throughout all the world. Let us be like those horses, let us all pull together, let us draw the great chariot of our King behind us, let us be content to wear his harness, that we may be partakers of his splendid triumph.Son 1:10. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.Christ here praises his Church. Orientals were in the habit of wearing jewels in such abundance that their cheeks were covered with them, and then they multiplied the chains of gold upon their necks; and the graces which Christ gives to his people, and especially the various parts of his own finished work, become to them like rows of jewels and chains of gold.Son 1:11. We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.As if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost would all work together to make the believer perfectly beautiful.Son 1:12-13. While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof. A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me;Not a sprig, mark you, but a bundle of myrrh.Son 1:13. He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.Christ, as a bundle of myrrh, shall always be near our hearts, so that every life-pulse shall come from him.Son 1:14. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.He is not, I say again, one sprig or spray of camphire, but a cluster of it. The spouse, you see, multiplies figures to describe her Bridegroom, and even when she has done so, she cannot reach the height of his glory. “Nor earth, nor seas, nor sun, nor stars, Nor heaven, his full resemblance bears; His beauties we can never trace, Till we behold him face to face.” Son 1:15. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.So Christ speaks of his Church, she has the soft, mild, tender eyes of a dove. Besides, she has the discerning eye by which the dove can distinguish between carrion and fit food; and then she has a clear eye like that of the dove. You know that the dove, or pigeon, when it is taken far away from home, and wants to reach its cote, flies round and round till it gets up high, and then it looks for miles, perhaps for hundreds of miles, till it tracks with unerring eye its own resting-place, or some familiar landmark, and then, with cutting wing, it flies through the ether till it reaches its home. So, every believer should have doves’ eyes, — eyes that can see from earth to heaven, and see Christ in his glory, even when his cause is disowned by men.Son 1:16-17. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir. We have the word “rafters” here, but it should be “galleries.” The “bed” expresses the near fellowship which Christ has with his people. The “house” is a larger expression, and perhaps denotes the whole Church; and the “galleries” signify the ordinances of grace. You notice that these are made of unrotting wood, the one of cedar and the other of fir; and truly, dear friends, in closing our reading, we can say to our Lord, — “No beams of cedar or of fir Can with thy courts on earth compare; And here we wait, until thy love Raise us to nobler seats above.” --- Two Sermons: Self-Humbling and Self-Searching and The Unkept Vineyard; Or, Personal Work Neglected Self-Humbling and Self-Searching by C. H. (1834-1892) "Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me, they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept."— Son 1:6 . Whence do I draw my text but from the very fountain of love? And to whom shall I address my discourse but to the friends of the bridegroom? Ye must have warm hearts, quick sensibilities, lively emotions to interpret the sayings and sympathize the tender notes of this most sacred song. I suppose that the history of the statues in St. Paul's Cathedral, from year to year, would not be remarkably interesting. They are placed upon their pedestals; they stand there quietly; and unless some terrible convulsion should occur, probably that will be the whole of their history for many years to come, as it has been for many years past. During the time in which any one of those statues has stood there, however, the history of any one human person has been checkered with all sorts of incidents, happy and sorrowful. Aches and pains, joys and rejoicings' depressions and exultations, have alternated in the living; but in the cold marble there has been no such change. Many of you in this house know little of what are the experiences of God's people. If you hear of their anxieties and encouragements, their temptations and deliverances, their inward conflicts and spiritual triumphs, their gloomy depressions and cheerful exultations—all those things seem to you as an idle tale. The living, the living, shall know the secret; but unto the mere professor this thing is not revealed. My subject, which will be mainly addressed to God's working people—to such as are really serving him—will appear to have very little bearing upon any here present who do not understand the spiritual life, and they will probably think that the evening to them is wasted. Just this word on the outset, however, I would drop in your ears. If you do not know anything of spiritual life, what will you do in the end of your natural life? If there be no work of God's Spirit upon your soul, and you are a stranger to the living experience of God's children, what will be your portion for ever? It must be divided to you with the unbelievers. Are you prepared to receive it? Are you willing that this should be your eternal destiny? Are you not, rather, alarmed? Are you not made anxious and desirous if by any means you may pass into that better, truer, state of life? Considering its boundless interests, notwithstanding all the present struggles and sorrows it may entail on you, do you not wish to know and prove what spiritual life means? I pray God you may. Let me remind you that the gospel preached to you is still available for your quickening; and whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus is born of God, and is possessor of that spiritual life. Now, in conducting the people of God to a special survey of our text, "Look not upon me, because I am black," our first remark shall be this: the fairest Christians are the most shamefaced with regard to themselves. The person who says, "Look not upon me, because I am black," is described by some one else in the eighth verse as the "fairest among women." Others, who thought her the fairest of the fair, spoke no less than the truth when they affirmed it; but in her own esteem she felt herself to be so little fair, and so much uncomely, that she besought them not even to look upon her. Why is it that the best Christians depreciate themselves the most? Is it not because they are most accustomed to look within? They keep their books in a better condition than those unsafe tradesmen, the counterpart of mere professors, who think themselves "rich and increased in goods," when they are on the very verge of bankruptcy. The Christian in his right state tests himself to see whether he be in the faith. He values too much his own soul to go on blindly. He knows that Heedless and Toobold are always bad pilots, so he sets Caution and Self-examination at the helm. He cries to God, "Search me, and know my heart." He is accustomed to examine his actions and his motives—to pass his words and his thoughts in review. He does not live the life of one who goes recklessly on; but he stops and considers his ways; and looks well to the state of everything within him "to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men." Solomon says, "The wise man looks to the state of his flocks and his herds;" and it is no marvel if any one suffer loss who neglects the counsel. But he also says, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life;" and it is quite certain that he who fails in this exercise is liable to every kind of moral disorder. In his anxiety to be pure from evil, the godly man will be eager to notice and quick to detect the least particle of defilement; and for this reason he discovers more of his blackness than any other man is likely to see. He is no blacker, but he looks more narrowly, and therefore he sees more distinctly the spots on his own character. The genuine Christian, also, tries himself by a higher standard. The professor, if he be as good as another professor, is well content. He estimates himself by a comparison with his neighbors. He has no standard but that of ordinary commonplace Christianity. Par otherwise is it with the believer who walks near to God; he asks himself "What manner of persons ought we to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?" He knows the law to be spiritual, and therefore he judges many things to be sinful which others wink at; and he counts some things to be important duties which others regard as trifles. The genuine Christian sets up no lower standard than perfection. He does not judge himself by others, but by the exact measure of the divine requirements, by the law of God, and especially by the example of his Lord and Master; and when he thus sets the brightness of the Savior's character side by side with his own, then it is that he cries out, "Look not upon me, for I am black." The mere professor never does this: he neither scrutinises himself nor observes his Master with close heed and strained attention, desiring to ascertain the truth; but he flatters himself in his own eyes, and goes on presumptuously. Not so the genuine Christian; he hides his face, sighs in secret, and cries before God, because he is not what he wants to be; not what his Lord was; not fully conformed to Christ in all things; and just because these short-comings grieve and vex his righteous soul, he cries, "Look not upon me, for I am black." All the while he may be of the highest type of Christian, yet he is not so in his own esteem. He may be a star to others, but he is a blot, as he thinks, to himself. In God's esteem he is "accepted in the Beloved," but in his own esteem he seems to himself to be full of all manner of evil, and he cries out against it before his Lord. Another reason why the fairest Christ are generally those that think themselves the blackest, is that they have more light. A person may seem to be very fair in the dark, very fair in the twilight; but when the light gets strong, and the eye is strengthened to perceive, then it is that spots that were not noticed before are soon discovered. You have, perhaps, a handkerchief that has looked to you extremely white; so it has been in comparison with other linen: but one day, when there has been a fall of snow, you have laid your handkerchief side by side with the snow, and you have seen that it was very far from the whiteness which you imagined. When the light of God comes into the soul, and we see what purity really is, what holiness really is, then it is the contrast strikes us. Though we might have thought we were somewhat clean before, when we see God in his light we see light, and we abhor ourselves in dust and ashes. Our defects so appall our own heart, that we marvel they do not exhaust his patience. The better Christ a man is, the more abashed he always feels; because to him sin is so exceedingly hateful, that what sin he sees in himself he loathes himself for far more than others do. The ungodly man would condone very great sin in himself; though he might know it to be there; it would not disturb him; but the Christian being another sort, having a love for holiness and a hatred for sin, cannot bear to see the smallest speck of sin upon himself: He knows what it is. There are persons living before the public eye, and jealous of popularity, who appear quite indifferent to the good opinion of the sovereign in whose kingdom they dwell there are other persons favourites at court, who would lie awake at night tossed to and fro in fear if they thought that something had been reported to the sovereign's ear that was disloyal. A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian. I will ask you now, dear hearers (most of on are members of this or of other churches), do you know what it is to fret because you have spoken an unadvised word? Do you know what it is to smite upon your breast, because you were angry?—justly provoked, perhaps, but still, being angry, you spoke unadvisedly. Have you ever gone to a sleepless couch, because in business you have let fall a word, or have done an action which, upon mature deliberation, you could not justify? Does the tear never come from your eye because you are not like your Lord, and have failed where you hoped to succeed? I would give little for your godliness, if you know nothing of this. Repentance is as much a mark of a Christian as faith itself. Do not think we have done with repenting when we come to Christ and receive the remission of our sins by the blood that did once atone. No; we shall repent as long as we sin, and as long as we need the precious blood for cleansing. While there is sin, or a proneness to any kind of sin, lurking in us, the grace of God will make us loathe the sin and humble ourselves before the Most High on account of it. Now, I think our text seems to say just this: there were some that admired the church. They said she was fair. She seemed to say, "Don't say it; you don't know what I am, or you would not praise me." Oh, there is nothing that brings a blush to a genuine Christian's face like praising him; for he feels—"Praise such a heap of dirt as I am? Give any credit to such a worthless worm as I am? No; do not cast admiring glances at me! Do not say, 'That man has many virtues and many excellences!' 'Look not upon me, for I am black.'" Are there not some who will imitate any Christian—and be very right in so doing—any Christian who is eminently godly and holy? There will be many who will follow in his footsteps. I think I see such a man turn round to his followers, and say: "Do not look at me; do not copy me. I am black. Copy a better model even Jesus. If I follow in his footsteps, follow me; but inasmuch as I have gone astray like a lost sheep, follow the shepherd; do not follow my example." Every Christian, in proportion as he lives near to God, will feel this self-abasement, this lowliness of heart; and if others talk of admiring or of imitating him, he will say, "Look not upon me, for I am black." And as he thus, in deep humility, begs that he be not exalted, he will often desire others that they would not despise him. It will come into his mind, "Such-and-such a man of God is a Christian indeed; as he sees my weakness, he will contemn me. Such-and-such a disciple of Christ is strong; he will never be able to bear with my weakness. Such-and-such a Christian woman does, indeed, adorn the doctrine of God her Savior; but as for me, alas! I am not what I ought to be, nor what I would be. Christ of God, do not look upon me with scorn. I will not say that you have motes in your own eyes. I have a beam in mine. Look not upon me too severely. Judge me not harshly. If you do look at me, look to Christ for me, and pray that I may be helped; 'for I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.'" Still I would have you beware of affecting aught that you do not feel. Humility itself may be counterfeited with much ostentation. Wherever there is anything like cant, as it is practiced by some people who depreciate themselves but do not mean it, it is loathsome to the last degree. I recollect a very proud man, certainly twice as proud as he was high, who used to pray for himself as "God's poor dust." There was nothing, I am sure, about his conduct and conversation that entitled him to use any such expression. I have heard of a monk who said he was full of sin—he was as bad as Judas; and when somebody said, "That is true," he turned round, and said, "What did I ever do that you should say so?" The effrontery of the arrogant is not more odious than the servility of the sycophant. There is a great deal of self-abnegation which is not genuine; it is the offspring of self-conceit, and not of self-knowledge. Much that we say of ourselves would mightily offend our vainglory if anybody else said the same of us. Oh, let us beware of mock humility! At the same time, the more of the genuine article we have the better, and the more truthfully we can cry out to God's people, "Look not upon me, because I am black," the more clear will it be that we are, after all, amongst the fairest. But I pass on. The most diligent Christian—let this stand for the second observation— the most diligent Christian will be the man most afraid of the evils connected with his work. "Evils connected with his work!" says one. "Does work for God have evils contingent upon it?" Yes; but for every evil connected with the work of God, there are ten evils connected with idleness. Nay, all you professors who are doing, nothing, are wearing yourselves out faster by rust than you could have done by honest wear. But, you see, in the case of our text, there was evil connected with work. She had been made a keeper of the vineyards, and having to trim the vines, the sun had shone upon her; and she says, "Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." The blackness that she confessed was a blackness occasioned by her having to bear the burden and heat of the day. And now I speak to such as live in active service, doing the work of God. Dear brethren, there are certain evils connected with our lifework coming of the sun that looks upon us, which we should confess before our heavenly Father. I speak now only to the workers. I have known some whom the sun has looked upon in this respect; their zeal has grown cold through non-success. You went out, first of all, as a Christian, full of fire and life. You intended to push the church before you, and drag the world after you. Peradventure you thought that you were going to work a Reformation almost as great as that of Luther. Well, much of that was of the flesh, though beneath the surface there was an earnest zeal for God which was eating you up. But you have been mixed up with Christians for some years of a very cool sort. Use the thermometer to-night. Has not the spiritual temperature gone down in your own soul? Perhaps you have not seen many conversions under your ministry? or in the class which you conduct you have not seen many children brought to Jesus? Do you feel you are getting cool? Then wrap your face in your mantle to-night! and say: "Look not upon me, for in losing my zeal I am black, for the sun hath looked upon me." Perhaps it has affected you in another way, for the sun does not bring freckles out on all faces in the same place. Perhaps it is your temper that is grown sour? When you joined the church you felt all love, and you expected, as you had a right to do, that everybody would reciprocate the same feeling; it may be that since then you have had to do battle against contentions. You have been in a part of the church where there has been a strife, not altogether for the faith once delivered to the saints, but something of a party feeling was mixed with it, and you have had to take some share in it. And perhaps you have gradually acquired a carping, critical habit, so that where you used to enjoy the word, you are now all for judging the preacher. You are not so much a feeder upon the word, as a mere taster of the dishes, to see if you cannot find some fault with their flavour. Wrap your face again, I beseech you, in your mantle. Again bow before God, and say: "Look not upon me, because I am black; the sun hath looked upon me. In my service for God I have been impaired." Perhaps, dear friend, you have suffered in another way! I sometimes suffer in this respect very materially. The Christian's walk ought to be calm, peaceful, quiet, unruffled. Leaving everything with the Lord, and waiting his will, our peace should be like a river. But you know that, when there is much to be done in God's service, there is a very strong temptation to want to push this and that thing forward with undue haste. Or if it does not move quickly at the rate you would wish, there is a temptation to be sad, careful, and anxious; to be, in fact, like Martha, cumbered with much service. When you get into that condition it is an injury to yourself and really prejudicial to your own work; for they serve Christ best who commune with him most, and broken fellowship means broken strength. Yet this is often our trouble; our energies are exhausted by worry more than by work. Part of our duty is neglected through unexpected cares that have distracted our thoughts. Pardon me, if I transfer the thing to myself in a figure. Say that this Tabernacle wants all my vigilance concentrated upon its welfare. Then there is another matter that wants instant attention at the same time. Here is a soul seeking Christ; here is another backsliding; here is a brother falling to ears with a brother. Innumerable things crowd upon one's view and clamor for immediate investigation till one gets disturbed and troubled. "Look not upon me, because I am black; because the sun hath looked upon me. The work I have engaged in for thee hath brought me into the sun, and burnt my face." It ought to be bright and fair with fellowship; it is soiled and begrimed with service. Sometimes this evil of sun-burning will come in the shape of joy taken away from the heart by weariness. I do not think, dear brethren, any of us are weary of God's work. If so, we never were called to it. But we may get weary in it. You recollect, some of you here—I speak to such as often preach the gospel—how happy you were when first you were permitted to open your mouth for Christ! Oh, what a joy it was! What a pleasure! How you threw your whole soul into it! There was no sleepiness and dulness in your sermon then. But now, year after year, year after year, your brain gets weary, and though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; the joy you once had in the service was your strength, and it has some what gone from you. The toil is more irksome when the spirits are less buoyant. Well, I would advise you to confess this before God, and ask for a medicine to heal you. You had need get your joy back, but first you must acknowledge that you have lost it. Say, "I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me." On the other hand, it is a bad result of a good work when our humility is injured thereby. Place a Christian man in a position where he has to do much for Christ, and is much thought of and set by: let him have great success: and the tendency will be for him to compliment himself as though he were some great one. You cannot reap great sheaves for the Master without this temptation coming over your soul. What a glorious workman you are, and what a great reward will your soul have for having done so well! It is the sun looking upon you; taking away the fairness of your humility, freckling and blackening your face with a pride that is obnoxious to God. This ought to be confessed at once and heartily repented of. I do not think I shall attempt to go through the list of all the matters that might come out of Christian service. It will suffice me to say, I am afraid that in many cases our motives get mixed. Pure and simple at first in our service, we may get at last to serve Christ only because it is our office to do so. Woe to the man that preaches only because he is a minister, and does not preach because he loves Christ! We may get also to be self-reliant. It is a great mercy for God's ministers when they tremble on going into the pulpit, even though they have been accustomed to preach for twenty years. Martin Luther declares that he never feared the face of man; and all who knew him could bear witness that it was even so; yet he said he never went up the stairs of the pulpit at Wittenburg but he felt his knees knock together with fear lest he should not be faithful to God and his truth. When we begin to rely upon ourselves' and think we can do it, and our experience and our practice will suffice to bear us safely through the next discourse without help from on high, then the sun has looked upon us, and blackened our face indeed, and the time of our usefulness draws to a close. Come, Christian people, brethren and sisters, thankful though I am that I can address so large a number who are engaged in the Master's work, I beseech you, let us go together to the footstool of the heavenly grace, confess there our blackness, and own that much of it has come upon us even while we were engaged in the service of God. In the third place, the most watchful Christian is conscious of the danger of self-neglect. That is the next part of our text. "they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept." Solemnly, let me speak again to my brethren who are seeking to glorify Christ by their lives. I met some time ago with a sermon by that famous divine, Mr. Henry Melvill, which consists all through of one solitary thought, and one only image well worked out. I will give you the pith of what took some eight pages to get through. He supposes a man to be a guide in Switzerland. It is his duty to conduct travelers in that country through the sublime passes, and to point out to them the glories of the scenery, and the beauties of the lakes, and streams, and glaciers, and hills. This man, as he continues in his office, almost inevitably gets to repeat his descriptions as a matter of course; and everybody knows how a guide at last comes to "talk book," and just iterate words which do not awaken any corresponding feeling in his own mind. Yet when he began, perhaps it was a sincere love of the sublime and the beautiful that led him to take up the avocation of a guide; and at first it really was to him a luxury to impart to others what he had felt amidst the glories of nature; but as, year after year, to hundreds of different parties, he had to repeat much the same descriptions, call attention to the same sublimities, and indicate the same beauties, it is almost impossible but that he should get to be at last a mere machine. Through the hardening tendency of custom, and the debasing influence of gain, his aptest descriptions and most exquisite eulogies come to be of no greater account than the mere language of a hireling. This thought I will not work out in extenso as that famous preacher has done, but I give it to you as a cutting, which may germinate if planted in the garden of your heart. Every worker for Christ is deeply concerned in the application of this parable; because the peril of self complacency increases in precisely the same ratio as the zeal of proselytising. When counselling others, you think yourself wise. When warning others, you feel yourself safe. When judging others, you suppose yourself above suspicion. You began the work with a flush of ardor; it may be with a fever of enthusiasm; a sacred instinct prompted, a glowing passion moved you. How will you continue it? Here is the danger—the fearful danger—lest you do it mechanically, fall into a monotony, continue in the same train, and use holy words to others with no corresponding feeling in your own soul. May we not stir others up to devout emotions, and yet our own hearts fail to burn with the sacred fire? Oh, may it not be easy for one to stand as a signpost on the road to heaven, and never stir himself? Every preacher who judges himself aright knows that this is the risk he incurs; and I believe the same danger in a measure threatens Christ in every form of work in which they occupy themselves for Christ. Dear friends, beware of reading the Bible for other people. Get your own text—your own morsel of marrow and fatness—out of Scripture; and do not be satisfied to be sermon-making or lesson-making for your class in the Sunday-school. Feed on the word yourselves, or else your own vineyard will not be kept. When you are on your knees in prayer, pray for others by all means; but, oh, let private prayer be kept up with a view to your own edification and your own growth in grace as well. Preach not the Savior's blood, and yet be without the blood mark on yourselves. Tell not of the fountain, and yet go unwashed. Do not point to heaven, and then turn your back to it and go down to hell. Fellow-workers, look to yourselves, lest after having preached to others ye yourselves should be cast away. Your neighbors certainly, but yourselves also; the children in your class certainly, your own children at home certainly, but look to yourselves also, oh, ye that are workers in God's house, lest ye keep the vineyards of others and your own vineyards be not kept. It is very possible for a man to get to dislike the very religion which he feels bound still by force of custom to go on teaching to others. "Is that possible?" says one. Alas! that it is. Have you never heard of the flower-girl in the streets? What is her occupation! I dare say some girls like her have passed by and seen her with a great basket full of violets, and said: "What a delightful occupation, to have that fragrant smell for ever near to one!" Yes, but there was one girl who sold them, and said she hated the smell of violets. She had got to loathe them, and to think that there was no smell in the world so offensive, because they were always under her nostrils all day, and taken home to her little scanty room at night, and having nothing but violets around her, she hated them altogether. And I do believe that there are persons without the grace of Christ in their hearts who keep on talking about grace, and mercy, and practicing prayer, and yet in their heart of hearts they hate the very fragrance of the name of Jesus, and need that there should come upon them an awakening out of their sleep of presumption and hypocrisy, to make them know that though they thought they were the friends of God, they were, after all, his enemies. They were mere keepers of other men's vineyards, but their own vineyards had gone to ruin. Our last reflection is of the deepest importance. The most conscientious Christian will be the first to enquire for the antidote, and to use the cure. What is the cure? The cure is found in the verse next to my text. "Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me. They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept." What next? "Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?" See, then, you workers, if you want to keep up your freshness, and not to get blackened by the sun under which you labor, go to your Lord again—go and talk to him. Address him again by that dear name, "Thou whom my soul loveth." Ask to have your first love rekindled; strive after the love of your espousals. There are men in married life who seem to have forgotten that they ever loved their wives; but there are others concerning whom the hymn is true— "And as year rolls after year, Each to other still more dear." So there are some Christians who seem to forget that they ever loved the Savior; but I trow there are others in whom that love deepens and becomes more fervent as each year passes over their heads. If any of you are at fault in this, do not give sleep to your eyelids to-night till you have renewed your espousal love. Thy Lord recollects it, if thou dost not, for he says: "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown." You did some wild things in those early days. You were a great deal more zealous than wise; but, though you look back upon that with censure, Christ regards it with delight. He wishes you were now as you were then. Perhaps to-day you are not quite cold to him. Do not flatter yourself on that account; for he has said, "I would thou wert cold or hot." It is just lukewarmness that he loathes most of all, and he has threatened to spue the lukewarm out of his mouth. Oh, to be always full of love to him! You will never get any hurt by working for him then; your work will do you good. The sweat of labor will even make your face the fairer. The more you do for souls, the purer, and the holier, and the more Christ will you be, if you do it with him. Keep up the habit of sitting at his feet, like Mary, as well as serving him with Martha. You can keep the two together; they will balance each other, and you shall not be barren or unfruitful, neither shall you fall into the blackness which the sun is apt to breed. O for more nearness to Christ, more love to Christ, and closer communion with him! Did you notice what the spouse said: "Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest?" I suppose her object was to go and feed with him. Look to the feeding of your own soul, Christian. When a man says, "I have a hard day's work to do, I shall have no time to eat," you know full well that he is losing time where he thinks he gains it; for if he does not keep himself in good repair he will sicken by-and-by, and in the long run he will do less than if he gave himself due pause. So is it with your soul. You cannot give out a vital energy which you have not got in you healthy and vigorous; and if you have not got power from God in your own soul, power cannot come out of you, for it is not there. Do, therefore, feed upon Christ. Or do you feel yourself like that guide of whom we spoke just now? Has the routine of service blunted your sensibilities, till you gaze unmoved on those objects of beauty and marvel that should awaken every passion and thrill every nerve of your being? Ask then in what way he might keep up his interest in the lakes and the mountains? Would it not be well for him, occasionally, at any rate, to take a lonely journey to find out new features in the gorgeous scenery or to stand in solitude, and see the hills in a fresh light, or mark the forest trees in different states of the weather; so that he might again renew his own sensations of admiration, and of gratitude to God for having created such sublimities? Then I can readily believe his enthusiasm would increase rather than abate by an increasing familiarity with the landscape. And you, worker for God, you must go to God alone; feed on precious truth for yourself; dig into the deep things of God and enrich your own spirit. Thus you may serve God as much as ever you will: you will get no hurt therefrom. Did you notice that she also asked: "Tell me where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon?" Rest is what the worker wants. Where is the rest of Christ's flock but in his own dear bosom? Where is there repose, but in his own fidelity, in the two immutable things wherein it is impossible for God to lie—the oath and the promise? Oh, never turn away from that rest! Turn into it again, to-night, beloved. As for me, I feel I want my Savior more than ever I did. Though I have preached his gospel now these five-and-twenty years and more, I need still to come and cling to his cross as a guilty sinner, and find "life for a look at the crucified One," just as I did at first. O that God's grace may ever keep the most ardent among us always faithful with our own soul, abiding in the Lord, and rejoicing in him! I have done. This is my word to workers. Let me only say to you for whom there has seemed nothing in the sermon, if you are not workers for Christ, you are workers against him. "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." O souls, why should you stand out against the Savior? Why should you resist him? Bleeding out his life for his enemies, the mirror of disinterested love, what is there in him that can make you fight against him? Drop your weapons, man! Drop them to-night, I charge you by the living God! And come now, ask pardon through the precious blood, and it shall be given you. Seek a new heart, and a right spirit. The Holy Ghost will work it. From this night be a worker for Christ. The church wants you. The armies of Christ need recruiting. Take the proffered blessing, and become a soldier of the cross; and may the Lord build up his Zion by many of you who were not his people aforetime, but of whom it is said: "They were not my people, but they shall be the people of the living God." ######################################################################### The Unkept Vineyard; Or, Personal Work Neglected September 19, 1886 by C. H. (1834-1892) "They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." Son 1:6 . The text is spoken in the first person singular; "They made me." Therefore let the preaching tonight be personal to you, dear friends- personal to the preacher first, and then to each one of this mixed multitude. May we at this hour think less of others than of ourselves! May the sermon be of practical value to our own hearts! I do not suppose that it will be a pleasing sermon- on the other hand it may be a saddening one. I may bring unhappy memories before you; but let us not be afraid of that holy sorrow which is health to the soul. Since the spouse in this text speaks of herself, "They made ME the keeper of the vineyards; but MY own vineyard have I not kept" -let each one of us copy her example, and think only of our own selves. The text is the language of "complaint". We are all pretty ready at complaining, especially of other people. Not much good comes of picking holes in other men's characters; and yet many spend hours in that unprofitable occupation. It will be well for us, at this time, to let our complaint, like that of the text, deal with ourselves. If there is something wrong at home, let the father blame himself; if there is something ill with the children, let the mother look to her own personal conduct as their instructor. Do not let us lend out our ears, but let us keep them at home for our own use. Let us clear out an open passage to the heart, so that everything that is said shall go down into the spirit, and purify our inner man. Let us from the heart make the confession "they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." Let us make the text "practical". Do not let us be satisfied to have uttered the language of complaint; but let us get rid of the evils which we deplore. If we have been wrong, let us labor to be right. If we have neglected our own vineyard, let us confess it with due humiliation; but let us not continue to neglect it. Let us ask of God that holy results may flow out of our self-lamentations, so that before many days we may begin to keep our own vineyards carefully by the grace of God; and then we shall better carry out the office of keeper of the vineyards of others, if we are called to such an employment. There are two things upon which I am going to dwell at this time. The first is, that there are many Christian people I hope they are Christian people who will be compelled to confess that the greater part of their life is spent in labor which is not of the highest kind, and is not properly their own. I shall find out the worker who has forgotten his heavenly calling. And when I have done with this case and I am afraid that there will be much about it that may touch many of us I shall then take a more general view, and deal with any who are undertaking other works, and neglecting their own proper vocation. I. First, then, let me begin with THE MAN WHO HAS HIS HIGH AND CALLING. In the day when you and I were born again, my brethren, we were born for God. In the day when we saw that Christ died for us, we were bound henceforth to be dead to the world. In the day when we were quickened by the Holy Spirit into newness of life, that life was bound to be a consecrated one. For a thousand reasons it is true that, "You are not your own: you are bought with a price." The ideal Christian is one who has been made alive with a life which he lives for God. He has risen out of the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He reckons that "if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live for themselves, but for him who died for them, and rose again." This you will not deny. Christian friends, you admit that you have a high, holy, and heavenly calling! Now let us look back. We have not spent our life idly: we have been forced to be keepers of the vineyards. I hope I am not addressing anybody here who has tried to live without employment and labor of some kind. No, we have worked, and we have worked hard. Most men speak of their wages as "hard-earned," and I believe that in many cases they speak the bare truth. Many hours in the day have to be spent upon our occupations. We wake up in the morning, and think of what we have to do. We go to bed wearied at night by what we have done. This is as it should be, for God did not make us that we might sport and play, like leviathan in the deep. Even in Paradise man was bidden to dress the garden. There is something to be done by each man, and specially by each Christian man. Come back to what I began with. In the day when we were born again, as many of us as are new creatures in Christ Jesus, we began to live to God, and not to ourselves. Have we carried out that life? We have worked, we have even worked hard; but the question comes to us What have we worked for? Who has been our master? With what object have we toiled? Of course, if I have been true to my profession as a Christian, I have lived and worked for God, for Christ, for the kingdom of heaven. But has it been so? And is it so now? Many are working very hard for wealth, which means, of course, for "self", that they may be enriched. Some are working simply for a competence, which means, if it goes no farther, still for "self". Others work for their families, a motive good enough in its way, but still only an enlargement, after all, of "self". To the Christian there must always be a far higher, deeper, purer, truer motive than self in its widest sense; or else the day must come when he will look back upon his life, and say, "They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard" -that is, the service of Christ, the glory of him that bought me with his blood "have I not kept." It seems to me to be a terrible calamity to have to look back on twenty years, and say, "What have I done in all those twenty years for Christ? How much of my energy has been spent in striving to glorify him? I have had talents: how many of those talents have been used for him who gave them to me? I have had wealth, or I have had influence. How much of that money have I spent distinctly for my Lord? How much of that influence have I used for the promotion of his kingdom?" You have been busy with this notion, and that motive, and the other endeavor; but have you lived as you will wish to have lived when you stand at his right hand amid his glories? Have you so acted that you will then judge yourself to have well lived when your Lord and Master shall come to call you to account? Ask yourself, "Am I an earnest laborer together with God, or am I, after all, only a laborious trifler, an industrious doer of nothing, working hard to accomplish no purpose of the sort for which I ought to work, since I ought to live unto my Lord alone?" I invite all my fellow-servants to take a retrospect, and just to see whether they have kept their own vineyards. I suppose that they have worked hard. I only put the question Have they kept their own vineyards? Have they served the Lord in all things? I am half afraid to go a step farther. To a very large degree we have not been true to our own professions: our highest work has been neglected, we have not kept our own vineyards. In looking back, how little time has been spent by us in communion with God! How little a part of our thoughts has been occupied with meditation, contemplation, adoration, and other acts of devotion! How little have we surveyed the beauties of Christ, his person, his work, his sufferings, his glory! We say that it is "heaven below" to commune with Christ; but do we do it? We profess that there is no place like the mercy-seat. How much are we at that mercy-seat? We often say that the Word of God is precious that every page of it glows with a heavenly light. Do we study it? Friends, how much time do you spend upon it? I venture to say that the bulk of Christians spend more time in reading the newspaper than they do in reading the Word of God. I trust that I am too severe in this statement, but I am afraid, greatly afraid, that I am not. The last new book, perhaps the last sentimental story, will win attentive reading; when the divine, mysterious, unutterable depths of heavenly knowledge are disregarded by us. Our Puritan forefathers were strong men, because they lived on the Scriptures. None stood against them in their day, for they fed on good food, whereas their degenerate children are far too fond of unwholesome food. The 'chaff of fiction', and the 'bran of the Quarterlies', are poor substitutes for the 'old corn of Scripture', the 'fine flour of spiritual truth'. Alas, my brethren, too many eat the 'unripe fruit of the vineyards of Satan', and the fruits of the Lord's vines they utterly despise! Think of our neglect of our God, and see whether it is not true that we have treated him very ill. We have been in the shop, we have been on the exchange, we have been at the markets, we have been in the fields, we have been in the public libraries, we have been in the lecture-room, we have been in the forum of debate; but our own closets and studies, our walk with God, and our fellowship with Jesus, we have far too much neglected. Moreover, the vineyard of "holy service" for God we have too much left to go to ruin. I would ask you How about the work your God has called you to do? Men are dying; are you saving them? This great city is like a seething caldron, boiling and bubbling up with infamous iniquity- are we doing anything by way of antidote to the hell-broth concocted in that caldron? Are we indeed a power working towards righteousness? How much good have we done? What have I done to pluck brands from the burning? What have I done to find the lost sheep for whom my Savior laid down his life? Come, put the questions, and answer them honestly! No, do not back out, and say, "I have no ability." I do not fear have more ability than you will give an account of with joy at the last great day. I remember a young man who complained that the little church over which he presided was so small. He said, "I cannot do much good. I have not above two hundred hearers." An older man replied, "Two hundred hearers are a great many to have to give an account of at the last great day." As I came in at yonder door this evening, and looked into these thousands of faces, I could not help trembling. How shall I answer for this solemn charge, for this enormous flock, in that last great day? You have all a flock of some kind, larger or smaller. You have all, as Christian people, somebody for whom you will have to answer. Have you done your Master's work in reference to those entrusted to you? O men and women, have you sought to save others from going down into the pit? You have the divine remedy: have you handed it out to these sick and dying ones? You have the heavenly word which can deliver them from destruction: have you spoken it in their ears, praying all the while that God might bless it to their souls. Might not many a man among you say to himself, "I have been a tailor," or "I have been a shop-keeper," or "I have been a mechanic," or "I have been a merchant," or "I have been a physician, and I have attended to these callings; but my own vineyard, which was my Master's, which I was bound to look to first of all, I have not kept?" Well, now, what is the remedy for this? We need not talk of our fault any more; let us make each one his own personal confession, and then seek amendment. I believe the remedy is a very sweet one. It is not often that medicine is pleasant, but at this time I prescribe for you a charming potion. It is that you follow up the next verse to my text. Read it "My own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O you whom my soul loves, where you feed, where you make your flock to rest at noon; for why should I be as one that turns aside by the flocks of your companions?" Get to your Lord, and in him you will find recovery from your neglects. Ask him where he feeds his flock, and go with him. They have warm hearts who commune with Christ. They are prompt in duty who enjoy his fellowship. I cannot help reminding you of what I have often spoken of, namely, our Lord's language to the church at Laodicea. That church had come to be so bad that he said, "I will spue you out of my mouth." And yet what was the remedy for that church? "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." After supping with Christ you will not be lukewarm. Nobody can say, "I am neither cold nor hot" when they have been in his company. Rather they will enquire, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way?" If there be an angel, as Milton sings, whose name is Uriel, who lives in the sun, I will warrant you he is never cold; so likewise, he that lives in Christ, and walks with him, is never chill, nor slow in the divine service. Away to your Lord, then! Hasten to your Lord, and you will soon begin to keep your vineyard; for in the Song you will see a happy change effected. The spouse began to keep her vineyard directly, and to do it in the best fashion. Within a very short time you find her saying, "Catch the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines." See, she is hunting out her sins and her follies. Farther on you find her with her Lord in the vineyard, crying, "Awake, O north wind; and come, you south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out!" She is evidently keeping her garden, and asking for heavenly influences to make the spices and flowers yield their perfume. She went down to see whether the vines flourished, and the pomegranates budded. Anon, with her beloved, she rises early to go to the vineyard, and watch the growth of the plants. Farther on you find her talking about all manner of fruits that she has laid up for her beloved. Thus you see that to walk with Christ is the way to keep your vineyard, and serve your Lord. Come and sit at his feet; lean on his bosom; rest on his arm; and make him to be the joy of your spirit. The Lord grant, dear brethren, that this gentle word, which I have spoken as much to myself as to you, may be blessed to us all! II. Now, I turn to the congregation in general, and speak with THE MAN WHO IN ANY PLACE HAS TAKEN OTHER WORK, AND HIS OWN. He can use the words of the text "they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept." We know many people who are always doing a great deal, and yet do nothing; fussy people, people to the front in every movement, people who could set the whole world right, but are not right themselves. Just before a general election there is a manifestation of most remarkable men generally people who know everything, and a few things besides, who, if they could but be sent to Parliament, would turn the whole world upside down, and put even Pandemonium to rights. They would pay the National Debt within six months, and do any other trifle that might occur to them. Very eminent men are these! I have come across impossibly great men. None could be so great as these feel themselves to be. They are an order of very superior people: reformers, or philosophers, who know what nobody else knows, only, happily, they have not patented the secret, but are prepared to tell it out to others, and thereby illuminate us all. I suggest to our highly-gifted friends that it is possible to be looking after a great many things, and yet to be neglecting your own vineyard. There is a vineyard that a great many neglect, and that is "their own heart". It is well to have talent; it is well to have influence; but it is better to be right within yourself. It is well for a man to see to his cattle, and look well to his flocks and to his herds; but let him not forget to cultivate that little patch of ground that lies in the center of his being. Let him educate his head, and intermeddle with all knowledge; but let him not forget that there is another plot of ground called the heart, the character, which is more important still. Right principles are spiritual gold, and he that has them, and is ruled by them, is the man who truly lives. He has not life, whatever else he has, who has not his heart cultivated, and made right and pure. Have you ever thought about your heart yet? Oh, I do not mean whether you have palpitations! I am no doctor. I am speaking now about the heart in its moral and spiritual aspect. What is your character, and do you seek to cultivate it? Do you ever use the hoe upon those weeds which are so plentiful in us all? Do you water those tiny plants of goodness which have begun to grow? Do you watch them to keep away the little foxes which would destroy them? Are you hopeful that yet there may be a harvest in your character which God may look upon with approval? I pray that we may all look to our hearts. "Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Pray daily, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me;" for if not, you will go up and down in the world, and do a great deal, and when it comes to the end you will have neglected your noblest nature, and your poor starved soul will die that second death, which is the more dreadful because it is everlasting death. How terrible for a soul to die of 'neglect'! How can we escape who 'neglect' this great salvation? If we pay every attention to our bodies, but none to our immortal souls, how shall we justify our folly? God save us from suicide by neglect! May we not have to moan out eternally, "They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but my own vineyard have I not kept!" Now, pass over that point, and think of another vineyard. Are not some people neglecting their "families"? Next to our hearts, our households are the vineyards which we are most bound to cultivate. I shall never forget a man whom I knew in my youth, who used to accompany me at times in my walks to the villages to preach. He was always willing to go with me any evening; and I did not need to ask him, for he asked himself, until I purposely put him off from it. He liked also to preach himself much better than others liked to hear him; but he was a man who was sure to be somewhere to the front if he could. Even if you snuffed him out, he had a way of lighting himself up again. He was good-natured and irrepressible. He was, I believe, sincerely earnest in doing good. But two boys of his were well known to me, and they would swear horribly. They were ready for every vice, and were under no restraint. One of them drank himself into a dying state with brandy, though he was a mere boy. I do not believe his father had ever spoken to him about the habit of intoxication, though he certainly was sober and virtuous himself. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/spurgeon/ Here we have a dialogue of love between the Lord Jesus and his people.Son 2:1. I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.Amongst all flowers, there is none that can be compared with him. “White is his soul, from blemish free, Red with the blood he shed for me.”Son 2:2. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.The child of God cannot long be mistaken for a worldling. The lily rises up above its thorny companions, but everybody knows that it is not a thorn; and chiefly do the quick eyes of the Lord Jesus discern his people wherever they may be found. You, dear friend, may perhaps come of a graceless family, or you may live in a house where God is all but unknown; yet Christ always knows his pure lilies, even if they grow among the cruel piercing thorns.Son 2:3. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.You who love the Lord Jesus know what this verse means. He is a great variety of delights to you; — food for your soul, a shadow for your head in the day of the sun’s burning heat. When you are near to him, the sun does not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. There is no shadow like Christ’s shadow, and no fruit like his fruit.Son 2:4. He brought me to the banqueting house,That, I trust, he will again do, as he has often done before, both while we are hearing his Word and when we approach his table: “He brought me to the banqueting house,” —Son 2:4. And his banner over me was love.Not the fiery ensign of war, but the peaceful banner of love. You have had enough of the world, beloved, during the past six days; you will again have enough of it in the six days yet to come; but just now, let love’s royal banner wave over you, and give up your thoughts entirely to him who has loved you with an everlasting love, and sealed his love to you by the blood that streamed from his pierced heart.Son 2:5. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.The love of Christ shed abroad in our heart sometimes quite overpowers us. It is very possible to be so delighted, so full of joy with a sense of the love of Jesus, that one feels unable to bear any more of it. Oh, for more of this blessed sickness! “It is a strange thing,” says one, “this love of Christ,” — “For, oh! when whole, it makes me sick, When sick, it makes me whole.” Son 2:6-7. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, Those lovely, but timid creatures that are so easily scared away, —Son 2:7. That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.O ye carking cares, keep away from us! Ye distractions that are so apt to arise in our crowded assembly, ye aches and pains that come in and make the body drag down the spirit, keep away from us for a while.Son 2:8. The voice of my beloved!The spouse knows it at once, her ear is so trained that she recognizes it as soon as she hears it. Jesus said that his sheep follow him, for they know his voice, and he added, “A stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”Son 2:8. Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.“I thought my sins would keep him back, for they seemed like great mountains, how could he come to me? But, ‘behold,’ he makes nothing of those barriers: ‘he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.’”Son 2:9. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.When we observe the ordinances aright, they are like latticed windows; we cannot see our Lord through them as clearly as we would, but still, we do see him, and we are thankful for these windows until we get up yonder, where we shall see him face to face.Son 2:10-13. My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. No matter what weather it is outside, it may be spring-time within. If your hearts have been frost-bound and barren, may they now begin to thaw at the approach of Jesus! Many of us have asked for his company, and believe that he will be here; and when he comes, he will make our souls rejoice. They shall be as watered gardens when the spring returns again.Son 2:14. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.Christ calls you out, you hidden ones, you who are half ashamed to be seen he bids you come to him. Come away from your doubting and your fearing, your halting and your hesitating; it is Jesus who calls you, therefore come to him at once.Son 2:15. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.Drive away every sin that would keep Christ away. Ask for his grace to subdue every wandering thought, that he may be with you in undisturbed communion.Son 2:16-17. My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether. Son 3:1-5. By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broadways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. --- The Best of the Best -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Sermon (No. 2472) Intended for Reading on Lord's-Day, July 5th, 1896, Delivered by C. H. , At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. On Thursday Evening, May 19th, 1881. "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys."—Son 2:1. THE time of flowers has come, and as they are in some faint degree emblems of our Lord, it is well, when God thus calls, that we should seek to learn what he desires to teach us by them. If nature now spreads out her roses and her lilies, or prepares to do so, let us try, not only to see them, but to see Christ as he is shadowed forth in them. "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." If these are the words of the Well-beloved,—and I have no doubt that they are,—then it may be suggested by some that here we have the Savior praising himself; and it is true; but in no unworthy sense, for well may he praise himself since no one else can do it as it should be done. There is no human language that can ever set forth his beauties as they deserve to be told. As good John Berridge says,— "Living tongues are dumb at best, We must die to speak of Christ" as he should be spoken of. He will never fully be described unless he shall describe himself. For certain, we should never have known God if he had not revealed himself; and every good thing that you or I know of him, he himself has told us. We make no discoveries of God except as God discovers himself to us. If, then, any cavillers were to find fault with the Christ of God because he did commend himself, I would answer, Does not God commend himself, and must not his well-beloved Son do the same? Who else is there that can possibly reveal him to us unless he unveils his own face to our admiring gaze? Moreover, be it always remembered that human self-praise is evil because of the motive which underlies it. We praise ourselves,—and, alas! that we should be so foolish as to do so,—we do it out of pride; but when Christ praises himself, he does it out of humility. "Oh!" say you, "how can you prove that to be true?" Why, thus; he praises himself that he may win our love; but what condescension it is on his part that he should care about the love of such insignificant and undeserving persons as we are! It is a wonderful stoop that the Christ of God should speak about having a bride, and that he should come to seek his bride among the sons of men. If princes were to look for consorts among beggars, that would be after all but a small stoop, for God hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth; but for Christ to forsake the thrones and glories of heaven, and the splendours of his Father's courts above, to come down to win a well-beloved one here, and for her sake to take upon himself her nature, and in her nature to bear the shame of death, even the death of the cross, this is stupendous condescension of which only God himself is capable; and this praising of himself is a part of that condescension, a necessary means of winning the love of the heart that he has chosen. So that this is a matchless instance, not of pride, but of humility, that those dear lips of the heavenly Bridegroom should have to speak to his own commendation, and that he should say, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." O human lips, why are ye silent, so that Christ must speak about himself? O human hearts, why are ye so hard that ye will never feel until Christ himself shall address you? O human eyes, why are ye so blind that ye shall never see till Christ shows himself in his own superlative light and loveliness? I think I need not defend my Master, though he used these sweet emblems to set forth himself; for this is an instance, not of his pride, but of his humility. It is also an instance of the Master's wisdom, for as it is his design to win hearts to himself, he uses the best means of winning them. How are hearts won? Very often, by the exhibition of beauty. Love at first sight has been begotten by the vision of a lovely countenance. Men and women, too, are struck with affection through the eye when they perceive some beauty which charms and pleases them; so, the Savior lifts the corner of the veil that conceals his glories, and lets us see some glimpse of his beauty, in order that he may win our hearts. There are some who seem to think that they can bully men to Christ; but that is a great mistake. It is very seldom that sinners can be driven to the Savior; his way is to draw them. He himself said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die." And the drawings of Christ are not, as it were, with a cart rope, but with silken bonds, ay, with invisible chains, for his beauty is of such a character that it creates love, his beauty is so attractive that it draws the heart. So, in infinite wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ sets forth his own beauties that thereby he may win our hearts. I do believe that there is no preaching like the exaltation of Christ crucified. There is nothing so likely to win the sons of men as a sight of him; and if God the Holy Ghost will but help all his ministers, and help all his people, to set forth the beauties of Christ, I shall not doubt that the same Spirit will incline men's hearts to love him and to trust him. Note, then, the condescension and also the wisdom which are perceptible in this self-commendation on the part of Christ: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." I think that our Lord also speaks thus as an encouragement to timid souls; his tender familiarity in praising himself to us is one of the most effectual proofs of his lowliness. Does Christ commend himself to us? Does he say to us, for instance, "I am meek and lowly in heart"? What is his object in speaking thus but that we may take his yoke upon us, and may learn of him, and that we may find rest unto our souls? And if he says, "I am the rose of Sharon," what does he mean but that we may pluck him, and take him for our own? If he says, "I am the lily of the valleys," why does he take the trouble to tell us that but because he wants us to take him, and to have him for our very own? I think that it is so sweet of Christ to praise himself in order to show that he longs for us to come to him. He declares himself to be a fountain of living water; yet why is he a fountain but that we may come unto him, and drink? He tells us, "I am the bread which came down from heaven;" but why does he speak of himself as bread, whereof if a man eat, he shall never hunger? Why, because he wants us to partake of him! You need not, therefore, be afraid that he will refuse you when you come to him. If a man praises his wares, it is that he may sell them. If a doctor advertises his cures, it is that other sick folk may be induced to try his medicine; and when our Lord Jesus Christ praises himself, it is a kind of holy advertisement by which he would tempt us to "come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." If he praises himself, it is that we may fall in love with him; and we need not be afraid to come and lay our poor hearts at his feet, and ask him to accept us, for he would not have wooed us by unveiling his beauties if he had meant, after all, to trample on our hearts, and say, "I care nothing for such poor love as yours." I feel most grateful, then, that I have not at this time so much to praise my Master as to let him speak his own praises, for "never man spake like this Man." When he commends himself, what would have been folly in others is wisdom in him; and whereas we say to our fellow-man, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth," I would say to Christ, "My Master, praise thyself, for thou alone canst do it as it ought to be done." As for thy poor servant, he would try to be the echo of thy voice, and that will be infinitely better than anything he can say of himself. I think, also, that there is good reason for our Lord to praise himself in the fashion that he does in our text, because, after all, it is not praise. "What!" say you, "and yet you have been talking all this while as if it was praise." Well, so it is in one sense, to us, but it is not so to Christ. Suppose the sun were to compare itself with a glow-worm, would that be praise? Suppose an angel were to compare himself with an emmet, would that be praise? And when my Lord and Master, whose eyes outshine the sun, and who is infinitely higher than the mightiest of the angels, compares himself to a rose and a lily, is that praise? Well, it is so to you and to me, but it certainly cannot be so to him. It is a marvellous stoop for Christ, who is "God over all, blessed for ever," and the Light of the universe, to say, "I am a rose; I am a lily." O my blessed Lord, this is a sort of incarnation, as when the Eternal God did take upon himself an infant's form! So here, the Everlasting God says, "I am"—and what comes next?—"a rose and a lily." It is an amazing stoop, I know not how to set it forth to you by human language; it is a sort of verbal rehearsal of what he did afterwards when, though he counted it not robbery to be equal with God, "he took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." "I am God, yet," saith he, "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." What does our text mean? I think it means that our Lord Jesus Christ is exceedingly delightful, so, let us speak, first, of the exceeding delightfulness of our Lord; and then, inasmuch as he uses two emblems, first the rose, and then the lily, surely this is to express the sweet variety of his delightfulness; and, inasmuch as he speaks of himself as the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys, I shall have to show you, in the last place, that this hints to us the exceeding freeness of his delightfulness. I. First, then, the text sets forth THE OF OUR LORD. He compares himself here, not as in other places to needful bread and refreshing water, but to lovely flowers, to roses and lilies. What is the use of roses and lilies? I know what the use of corn is; I must eat it, it is necessary to me for food. I know why barley and rye and all sorts of roots and fruits are created; they are the necessary food of man or beast. But what do we want with roses? What do we want with lilies? They are of no use at all except for joy and delight. With their sweet form, their charming color, and their delicious fragrance, we are comforted and pleased and delighted; but they are not necessaries of life. A man can live without roses; there are millions of people, I have no doubt, who live without possessing lilies of the valley. There are all too few roses and lilies in this smoky Babylon of ours; but, when we do get them, what are their uses? Why, they are things of beauty, if not "a joy for ever." Jesus is all that and more; he is far more than "a thing of beauty," and to all who trust him he will be "a joy for ever." To you who are Christ's people, he is your bread, for you feed on him, and he makes you live; you could not do without him as the sustenance of your soul. He is the living water, and your soul would pine and perish of a burning thirst if you did not drink of him. But that is not all that Jesus is to you; God has never intended to save his people on the scale of the workhouse, to give you just as much as you absolutely need, and nothing more. No, no, no; he means you to have joy as well as to have life, to look upon beauty as well as to be in safety, and to have not only a healthy atmosphere, but an atmosphere that is laden with the odour of sweet flowers. You are to find in Christ roses and lilies, as well as bread and water; you have not yet seen all his beauties, and you do not yet know all his excellence. The exceeding delightfulness of Christ is suggested to our mind by his declaration, "I am the rose, and I am the lily." And first, he is in himself the delight of men. He speaks not of offices, gifts, works, possessions; but of himself: "I am." Our Lord Jesus is the best of all beings; the dearest, sweetest, fairest, and most charming of all beings that we can think of is the Son of God, our Savior. Come hither, ye poets who dream of beauty, and then try to sing its praises; but your imagination could never reach up to the matchless perfection of his person, neither could your sweetest music ever attain to the full measure of his praise. Think of him as the God-man, God incarnate in human nature, and absolutely perfect; I was going to say something more than that, for there is not only in him all that there ought to be, but there is more than your thoughts or wishes have ever compassed. Eyes need to be trained to see beauty. No man seeth half or a thousandth part of the beauty even of this poor, natural world; but the painter's eye—the eye of Turner, for instance,—can see much more than you or I ever saw. "Oh!" said one, when he looked on one of Turner's landscapes, "I have seen that view every day, but I never saw as much as that in it." "No," replied Turner, "don't you wish you could?" And, when the Spirit of God trains and tutors the eye, it sees in Christ what it never saw before. But, even then, as Turner's eye was not able to see all the mystery of God's beauty in nature, so neither is she most trained and educated Christian able to perceive all the matchless beauty that there is in Christ. I do not think, brethren, that there is anything about Christ but what should make his people glad. There are dark truths concerning him, such as his bearing our sin; but what a joy it is to us that he did bear it, and put it away for ever! It makes us weep to look at Jesus dying on the cross, but there is more real joy in the tears of repentance than there is in the smiles of worldly mirth. I would choose my heaven to be a heaven of everlasting weeping for sin, sooner than have a heaven—if such a heaven could be,—consisting of perpetual laughing at the mirth of fools. There is more true pleasure in mourning before God than in dancing before the devil. Christ is, then, all beauty; even the dark parts in him are light, and the bitter parts are sweet. He has only to be seen by you, and you must perceive that, whether it be his Godhead or his manhood, whether it be his priesthood, his royalty, or his prophetic office, whether it be on the cross or on the throne, whether it be on earth, or in heaven, or in the glory of his second coming, every way,— "All over glorious is my Lord, Must be beloved, and yet ador'd; His worth if all the nations knew Sure the whole earth would love him too." But, next, our Lord is exceedingly delightful to the eye of faith. He not only tells us of what delight is in himself,—"I am the rose, and I am the lily,"—but he thereby tells us that there is something to see in him, for the rose is very pleasing to look upon. Is there a more beautiful sight than a rose that is in bud, or even one that is fullblown? And the lily—what a charming thing it is! It seems to be more a flower of heaven than of earth. Well now, Christ is delightful to the eye of faith. I remember the first time I ever saw him; I shall never forget that sight, and I have seen him many a time since, and my grief is that I ever take off my eyes from him, for it is to look away from the sun into blackness; it is to look away from bliss into misery. To you who look at Christ by faith, a sight of him brings such peace, such rest, such hope, as no other sight can ever afford; it so sweetens everything, so entirely takes away the bitterness of life, and brings us to anticipate the glory of the life that is to come, that I am sure you say, "Yes, yes; the figure in the text is quite correct; there is a beauty in Jesus to the eye of faith, he is indeed red as the rose and white as the lily." And, next, the Lord Jesus Christ is delightful in the savor which comes from him to us. In him is a delicious, varied, abiding fragrance which is very delightful to the spiritual nostril. Smell is, I suppose, a kind of delicate feeling; minute particles of certain substances touch sensitive membranes, and we call the sensation that is produced smelling. It is a mysterious sense; you can understand sight and hearing better than you can understand smelling. There is a spiritual way of perceiving the savor of Christ; I cannot explain it to you, but there is an ineffable mysterious sweetness that proceeds from him which touches the spiritual senses, and affords supreme delight; and as the body has its nose, and its tender nerves that can appreciate sweet odours, so the soul has its spiritual nostril by which, though Christ be at a distance, it yet can perceive the fragrant emanations that come from him, and is delighted therewith. What is there that comes from Christ, from day to day, but his truth, his Spirit, his influence, his promises, his doctrines, his words of cheer? All these have a heavenly sweetness, and make us, with the psalmist, say to our Lord, "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." Whenever these sweet odours are wafted down to us, they make us also glad; anything that has the savor of Christ in it is sweet to a Christian. If Christ has touched it, let me put it in my bosom, and keep it there as a sweet forget-me-not, until I see his face in glory. Ay, the very stones he sat on, I was about to say, the very mountains at which he looked, have become dear to us. We have no idolatrous or superstitious reverence for Palestine, or even for the garden in which he sweat great drops of blood; but for spiritual things with which he has to do, we have a never-ceasing reverence and affection. Everything that comes from him is wondrous as the songs of the angels must have been to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and sweet to the taste as the manna that dropped from the skies around Israel's desert camp. Yes, brethren and sisters, there is a sweet savor about the Lord Jesus Christ; do you all perceive it? Once more, in all that he is, Christ is the choicest of the choice. You notice, the Bridegroom says, "I am the rose." Yes, but there were some particularly beautiful roses that grew in the valley of Sharon; "I am that rose," said he. And there were some delightful lilies in Palestine; it is a land of lilies, there are so many of them that nobody knows which lily Christ meant, and it does not at all signify, for almost all lilies are wondrously beautiful. "But," said he, "I am the lily of the valleys," the choicest kind of lily that grew where the soil was fat and damp with the overflow of mountain streams. "I am the lily of the valleys:" that is to say, Christ is not only good, but he is the best; and he is not only the best, but he is the best of the best. He is a flower; ay, but he is a rose, that is the queen of flowers; ay, but then he is the best rose there is, he is the rose of Sharon. He is a Savior, and a great one; yea, the only Savior. He is a Husband; but what a Husband! Was there ever such a Bridegroom as Christ Jesus the Lord? He is the Head; but Father Adam was a poor head compared with him. He is inexpressibly, unutterably, indescribably lovely; I might as well leave off talking about him, for I cannot hope to set him forth as he deserves. If you could but see him, I would leave off, for I am sure I should be only hanging a veil before him with the choicest words that I could possibly use. Suppose you had a dear son, or husband, or friend, far away, and that I was a painter who could carry pictures in my mind's eye, and then draw them to the very life. If I stood here, trying to paint your well-beloved friend, laying on my colors with all the skill I possessed, and doing my best to reproduce his features; suppose, while I was at work, that the door at the back was opened, and he came in, I should cry out, "Oh, stop, stop, stop! Let me put away my canvas, let me pack up my brushes and my paints. Here is the loved one himself; look at him! Look at him, not at my portrait of him!" And you would rise from your seat, and say, "It is he! It is he! You may talk as long as you like, dear sir, when he is away; but when he is himself here, your talk seems but mere chatter." Well, I shall be quite content that you should think so, I shall be even glad if you do, provided that the reason shall be that you can say, "We have seen the Lord. He has manifested himself to us as he does not unto the world." "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." The best of the best, the fairest of the fair, the sweetest of the sweet, is Jesus Christ to you and to me if we are indeed his people. I cannot say more about the exceeding delightfulness of my Lord; I wish I could. II. I must pass on, next, to notice THE SWEET VARIETY OF CHRIST'S . He is not only full of joy, and pleasure, and delight to our hearts, but he is full of all sorts of joy, and all sorts of pleasure, and all sorts of delights to us. "Nature, to make his beauties known, Must mingle colors not her own." The rose is not enough, you must have the lily also, and the two together fall far short of the glories of Christ, the true "Plant of renown." "I am the rose." That is the emblem of majesty. The rose is the very queen of flowers; in the judgment of all who know what to admire it is enthroned above all the rest of the beauties of the garden. But the lily—what is that? That is the emblem of love. The psalmist hints at this in the title of the forty-fifth Psalm. "Upon Shoshannim, a Song of love." Shoshannim signifies lilies, so the lily-psalm is the love-song, for the lilies, with their beauty, their purity, their delicacy, are a very choice emblem of love. Are you not delighted when you put these two things together, majesty and love? A King upon a throne of love, a Prince, whose very eyes beam with love to those who put their trust in him, a real Head, united by living bonds of love to all his members;—such is our dear Lord and Savior. A rose and yet a lily; I do not know in which of the two I take the greater delight, I prefer to have the two together. When I think that my Savior is King of kings and Lord of lords, I shout, "Hallelujah!" But when I remember that he loved me, and gave himself for me, and that still he loves me, and that he will keep on loving me for ever and ever, there is such a charm in this thought that nothing can excel it. Look at the lily, and sing,— "Jesu, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high! Hide me, O my Savior, hide, Till the storm of life be past; Safe into the haven guide; Oh receive my soul at last." Then look at the rose, and sing,— "All hail the power of Jesus' name! Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown him Lord of all;" then put the rose and the lily together, and let them remind you of Christ's majesty and love. The combination of these sweet flowers also suggests our Lord's suffering and purity. "White is his soul, from blemish free, Red with the blood he shed for me." The rose, with its thorn, reminds us of his suffering, his bleeding love to us, his death on our behalf, his bearing of the thorns which our sin created. Christ is a royal rose beset with thorns; but the lily shows that— "For sins not his own He died to atone." Jesus, when on earth, could say, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." The devil himself could not see a spot or speck in that lovely lily. Jesus Christ is perfection itself, he is all purity; so you must put the two together, the rose and the lily, to show Christ's suffering and perfection, the infinitely pure infinitely suffering. In which of the two do you take the greater delight? Surely, in neither, but in the combination of both; what would be the value of Christ's sufferings if he were not perfect? And of what avail would his perfections be if he had not died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God? But the two together, the rose and the lily, suffering and purity, fill us with delight. Of both of these there is a great variety. I wonder how many different sorts of roses there are, I should not like to have to tell you; they vary exceedingly, perhaps there are as many kinds as there are days in the year. How many varieties of lilies are there? Possibly, there are as many sorts of lilies as there are of roses, for both of them are wonderfully diversified; but the joys that flow from our Lord Jesus Christ are as abundant and as varied as the roses and the lilies. Bring me which rose you please, and I will tell you that it smells sweet; bring which lily you choose, and I will say, "Yes, that also has a delicate perfume; that will do, with the rose, to serve as an emblem of Christ." Our Lord Jesus possesses every kind of beauty and fragrance. "He is all my salvation, and all my desire." All good things meet in Christ; in him all the lines of beauty are focussed. Blessed are they who truly know him. Further, Christ is the very essence of the sweetness both of the rose and of the lily. When he says, "I am the rose," he means, not only that he is like the rose, but that he made all the sweetness there is in the rose, and it is still in him; and all the sweetness there is in any creature comes to us from Christ, or else it is not sweetness such as we ought to love. I like to look upon the bread I eat as his gift to me, and to bless his providential hand that bestows it. I like to look upon all the landscape on such a fair day as this has been, and to say, "Christ is in all this, giving this charming view to such a poor, unworthy creature as I am." He is in all there is that is good, he is the goodness of all the good there is. He is the very soul of the universe, whatever there is in the universe that is worthy of our soul's love. All good for our soul comes from him, whether it be pardon of sin, or justification, or the sanctification that makes us fit for glory hereafter, Christ is the source of it all; and in the infinite variety of delights that we get from him, he is himself the essence of it all. We can become tired of most things, I suppose that we can become tired of everything earthly; but we shall never tire of Christ. I remember one who, when near his death-hour, forgot even his wife, and she was greatly grieved that he did not recognize her. They whispered in his ear the name of his favourite child; but he shook his head. His oldest friend, who had known him from his boyhood, was not recognized. At last they asked him, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" Then he said, "Ah, yes! and I am going to him." The ruling passion was strong in death; Christ was nearer and dearer to him than those he loved best here. All Bowers will fade, even roses and lilies among them; but not this blessed Rose of Sharon, and Lily of the valleys. Christ does not say, "I was a rose, and I was a lily;" but "I am the rose, and I am the lily." He is now all that he ever was, and he will be in life, in death, and throughout all eternity, to the soul that knows him, an infinite variety of everything that is delightful. III. I must now very briefly take up the last head of my discourse, which is, THE OF OUR LORD'S . It is not very pleasant or satisfying for hungry people to stand in the street, and hear someone praising a good meal, of which they cannot get even a taste. I have often noticed boys standing outside a shop window, in which there have been all sorts of dainties; they have flattened their noses against the window-pane, but they have not been able to get anything to eat. I have been talking about my Master, and I want to show you that he is accessible, he is meant to be plucked and enjoyed as roses and lilies are. He says in the text, "I am the rose of Sharon." What was Sharon? It was an open plain where anybody might wander, and where even cattle roamed at their own sweet will. Jesus is not like a rose in Solomon's garden, shut up within high walls, with broken glass all along the top. Oh, no! he says, "I am the rose of Sharon," everybody's rose, the flower for the common people to come and gather. "I am the lily." What lily? The lily of the palace of Shushan, enclosed and guarded from all approach? No; but, "I am the lily of the valleys," found in this glen, or the other ravine, growing here, there, and everywhere: "I am the lily of the valleys." Then Christ is as abundant as a common flower. Whatever kind of rose it was, it was a common rose; whatever kind of lily it was, it was a well-known lily that grew freely in the valleys of that land. Oh, blessed be my Master's name, he has brought us a common salvation, and he is the common people's Christ! Men in general do not love him enough, or else they would have hedged him in with all sorts of restrictions; they would have made a franchise for him, and nobody would have been able to be saved except those who paid I know not how much a year in taxes. But they do not love our Lord enough to shut him in, and I am glad they have never tried to do so. There he stands, at the four-cross roads, so that everybody who comes by, and wants him, may have him. He is a fountain, bearing this inscription, "Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." Why do roses grow in Sharon? Why do lilies grow in the valleys? Why, to be plucked, of course! I like to see the children go down into the meadow when it is decked in grass, and adorned with flowers, gilded with buttercups, or white with the day's-eyes; I love to see the children pluck the flowers, and fill their pinafores with them, or make garlands, and twist them round their necks, or put them on their heads. "O children, children!" somebody might cry, "do not spoil those beautiful flowers, do not go and pick them." Oh, but they may! nobody says they may not; they may not go into our gardens, and steal the geraniums and the fuchsias; but they may get away into the meadows, or into the open fields, and pluck these common flowers to their heart's content. And now, poor soul, if you would like an apronful of roses, come and have them. If you would like to carry away a big handful of the lilies of the valleys, come and take them, as many as you will. May the Lord give you the will! That is, after all, what is wanted; if there be that grace-given will, the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys will soon be yours. They are common flowers, growing in a common place, and there are plenty of them; will you not take them? Even to those who do not pluck any, there is one strange thing that must not be forgotten. A man passes by a rose-bush, and says, "I cannot stop to think about roses," but as he goes along he exclaims, "Dear, dear, what a delicious perfume!" A man journeying in the East goes through a field that is full of lilies; he is in a great hurry, but, for all that, he cannot help seeing and smelling the lilies as he rushes through the field. And, do you know, the perfume of Christ has life in it? He is "a savor of life unto life." What does that mean but that the smell of him will save? Ah! if you do but glance at him, though you were so busy that you could not come in till the sermon had begun, yet a glance at this Lily will bring you joy and peace, for he is so free that, often, even when men are not asking for him, he comes to them. "What?" say you, "is it so?" Yes, that it is; such is the freeness of Christ's grace that it is written, "I am found of them that sought me not." He sends his sweet perfume into nostrils that never sniffed after it. He puts himself in the way of eyes that never looked for him. How I wish that some man who has never sought for Christ, might find him even now! You remember the story that Christ tells of the man that was ploughing the field; he was only thinking of the field, and how much corn it would take to sow it; and he was ploughing up and down, when suddenly, his plowshare hit upon something hard. He stopped the oxen, and took his spade, and dug, and there was an old crock, and it was full of gold. Somebody had hidden it away, and left it. This man had never looked for it, for he did not even know it was there, but he had stumbled on it, as men say, by accident. What did he do? He did not tell anybody, but he went off to the man who was the owner of the field, and he said, "What will you take for that field?" "Can you buy it?" "Yes, I want it, what will you take for it?" The price was so high that he had to sell the house he lived in, and his oxen, and his very clothes off his back; but he did not care about that, he bought the field, and he bought the treasure, and then he was able to buy back his clothes, his house, and his oxen, and everything else. If you find Christ, and if you have to sell the coat off your back in order to get him, if you have to give up everything you have that you may find him, you will have such a treasure in him that, for the joy of finding him, you would count all the riches of Egypt to be less than nothing and vanity; but you need not sell the coat off your back, Christ is to be had for nothing, only you must give him yourself. If he gives himself to you, and he becomes your Savior, you must give yourself to him, and become his servant. Trust him, I beseech you, the Lord help you so to do, for Jesus' sake! Amen. Genesis 8:15-22; and Jeremiah 33:15-26. Genesis 8:15-21. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savor; Until then, the earth had been obnoxious to Jehovah. He had put it away from him as a foul thing, drowned beneath the flood; but after the offering of Noah's sacrifice, the Lord smelled "a savor of rest." 21, 22. And the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground. And any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Thus we see what we may expect so long as the earth remains, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Now let us read a few verses from Jeremiah's prophecy. Jeremiah 33:15. In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In the latter days, at the glorious appointed time, Jesus Christ will grow up like a Branch out of the stem of Jesse. The dynasty of David now seems like a tree out down, whose stock is buried under the ground, but "the Branch of righteousness" shall appear in due time, and Jesus, the Son of David, "shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land." 16. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith the shall be called, The LORD our righteousness. What a wonderful unity there is between Christ and his Church! She actually takes his name: "The Lord our righteousness." 17, 18. For thus saith the LORD; David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel, neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually. This shows that the covenant was not a literal and fleshly one, made with David and his seed according to the flesh, or with the priests and their seed according to the flesh. There is a Kingdom that can never be moved, and our Lord sits on that throne; there is a Priesthood which is everlasting, it is held by that great High Priest who hath offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, and who abides a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisdec. 19, 22. And the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, saying Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season, then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne, and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. So that they are at this day the seed of Jesus, the Son of David, who shall count them? And the company of those whom he hath made to be kings and priests unto God, who but he can number them? 23-26. Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which the LORD hath chosen, he hath even cast them off? thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the LORD, If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them. This shall be literally fulfilled in the latter days, I doubt not, but it is even now being fulfilled to the spiritual seed of Jacob and David. The covenant of grace is made sure to all the seed, even to as many as have believed on Christ's name. 3:1. By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.Sometimes, the most eager search does not at once obtain its end. For wise reasons, Christ sometimes hides himself from his seeking people.Son 3:2-5. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field,—“By everything that is timid, and delicate, and pure, and full of love, I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,”—Son 3:5. That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.“I have found my Beloved, and I would not lose him again; he has come to me, so I will not grieve him, and drive him away.” That is the one of our reading: “Come near to me, I pray thee; and when thou comest near me, keep by me still.” Extracted from an exposition of Gen 45:1-13; Son 1:1-7; Son 3:1-5. The Royal Pair in Their Glorious Chariot November 30th, 1862 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant? Behold his bed, which is Solomon's; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel. They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem. Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart."— Son 3:6-11 . Great princes in the East are in the habit of travelling in splendid palanquins, which are at the same time chariots and beds. The person reclines within, screened by curtains from public view; a body-guard protects the equipage from robbers, and blazing torches light up the path along which the travelers proceed. King Solomon, in this Song, describes the Church of Christ, and Christ himself, as travailing through the world in such a palanquin. The day is coming when both our divine Lord and his chosen bride shall be revealed in glory before the eyes of all men. The present age is the period of concealment—the mystical Solomon and his beloved Solyma are both on earth, but they are unseen of men; like the ark of old they dwell within curtains; only the anointed priests of God can discern their beauties, and even these gaze rather by faith than by sight. "Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," is certainly true, for Jesus is here; but equally correct is that word of Peter, "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." He is here in the reality, power, and influence of his presence, but he is not here as to the visibility of his kingdom and person, for we wait with our loins girt about, and with patience of hope, until the revelation of Jesus Christ. The portion of the blessed canticle now before us is, we think, descriptive of the progress of the hidden Christ through the world. He has been borne along, in very truth, but he himself has been so little perceived of men, that they even ask the question, "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness?" He is not now manifested openly to men. If any should say, "Lo here!" or "Lo there! this is Christ!" believe them not, for Christ is not as yet seen. When he doth come he shall be as perceptible as the lightning's flash, which every man's eye discerneth without the need of an instructor. So, also, with his true Church. She also is hidden like her Lord, and though her hand, her foot, or her face may be sometimes seen, yet the whole elect body has never yet been beheld. If any say, "Lo, here is the Church of Christ!" or "Lo there!" believe them not, for it is a fact that there is no corporation of men of which we can say exclusively or even universally, "Lo, this is the Church of Christ." There are tares growing with the wheat in the best guarded field, and on the other hand no one enclosure contains all the wheat. The true Church of Christ is scattered here and there, it is found amongst all denominations, and there is not one denomination of which you can say, "This only is the Church of Christ, or all its members belong to the body of Christ's spouse." Just now the mystical bride is in a certain sense as invisible as her husband. Behold, then, the betrothed ones carried through the world in the sumptuous chariot of which we have to speak this morning. I must now claim your attention while I notice, first, the glory of the progress of Christ through the world, as described in the sixth verse; secondly, the security of Christ's cause, as represented in thy seventh and eighth; thirdly, the superlative excellence of it, as described in the ninth and tenth; and lastly, our joyful duties with regard to it, as openly declared in the eleventh. I. First, then, THE , THE ON-GOING OF THE CHURCH AND HER LORD THROUGH THE WORLD. "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?" The equipage excites the attention of the on-looker; his curiosity is raised, and he asks, "Who is this?" Now, in the first progress of the Christian Church, in her very earliest days, there were persons who marvelled greatly; and though they set down the wonders of the day of Pentecost to drunkenness, yet "they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?" In after years, many a heathen philosopher said, "What is this new power which is breaking the idols in pieces, changing old customs, making even thrones unsafe-what is this?" By-and-bye, in the age of the Reformation, there were cowled monks, cardinals in their red hats, and bishops, and princes, and emperors, who all said, "What is this? What strange doctrine has come to light?" In the times of the modern reformation, a century ago, when God was pleased to revive his Church through the instrumentality of Whitfield and his brethren, there were many who said, "What is this new enthusiasm, this Methodism? Whence came it, and what power is this which it wields?" And, doubtless, whenever God shall be pleased to bring forth his Church in power, and to make her mighty among the sons of men, the ignorance of men will be discovered breaking forth in yonder, for they will say, "Who is this?" Spiritual religion is as much a novelty now as in the day when Grecian sages scoffed at it on Mars' Hill. The true Church of God is a stranger and pilgrim still; an alien and a foreigner in every land; a speckled bird; a dove in the midst of ravens; a lily among thorns. The ignorance of men concerning spiritual things is not, however, caused by the darkness of the things themselves, for Christ and his Church are the great lights of the world. When great personages traveled in their palanquins, and more especially on marriage processions, they were attended by a number of persons who, at night, carried high up in the air burning cressets which gave forth a blaze of light. Sometimes these lights were simply torches carried in the hands of running footmen; at other times they were a sort of iron basket lifted high into the air, upon poles, from which went up a pillar of smoke and flame. Our text says "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke?" a beautiful illustration of the fact that wherever Christ and his cause are carried, light is a sure accompaniment. Into whatsoever region the gospel may journey, her every herald is a flash of light, her every minister a flaming fire. God maketh his Churches the golden candlesticks, and saith unto his children "Ye are the lights of the world," is certainly as ever God said "Let there be light," and there was light over the old creation, so does he say, whenever his Church advances, "Let there be light" and there is light. Dens of darkness, where the bats of superstition had folded their wings and hung themselves up for perpetual ease, have been disturbed by the glare of these divine flambeaux; the innermost caverns of superstition and sin, once black with a darkness which might be felt, have been visited with a light above the brightness of the sun. "The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light has sprung up." Thus saith the Lord unto the nation where his kingdom cometh, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord hath risen upon thee!" Bear ye the Church of Christ to the South Seas; carry Christ and his spouse in his palanquin to the Caffre, the Hottentot, or the Esquimaux, and everywhere the night of death is ended, and the morning with its glorious dawn has come. High lift your lamps, ye servants of our Lord. High lift up the cross of the Redeemer; for in him is light, and the light in the life of men. But you will tell me that our text rather speaks of "pillars of smoke" than of sparkling lamps. Brethren, the smoke is but the effect of the flame, and even the pillar of smoke is luminous. What is the smoke that has attended the Church? What but the deaths of her martrys, the sufferings of her confessors, the patient endurance of her valiant sons? Wherever she goes, the thick smoke of her suffering goeth up to heaven. "We are alway delivered unto death," said the apostle. The cause of truth involves a perpetual sacrifice; her smoke ascendeth for ever. Black smoke I say it is in the eye of man, but unto God it is a sweet-smelling savor. Never did fat of rams, or the fat of kidnies of fed beasts, smell so sweetly before the Most High as the faith, the love, the courage, which has ascended up to heaven from the dauntless heroes of the Church in past ages when at the stake they have been faithful even unto death. Suffering, and grief, and woe are the lot of the spouse of the despised and rejected Savior, but all these are as things of nought if thereby she may scatter that terrible blackness which blinds the face of man and makes him a stranger to his God. It often happens that oriental monarchs of immense possessions, are not content with burning common coals in these cressets, but frequently consume sandal-wood and other woods which give forth a delightful smell; or else, if they use ordinary coals, they sprinkle upon them frankincense and myrrh, so that a delicious perfume is spread on all sides. In the olden times, they also went to great expense in obtaining drugs, which the merchants collected from all parts of the earth, and these were carefully compounded into the renowned "powders of the merchants," which yielded a delicious variety of delicate perfumes, not to be produced by any one aromatic essence. Our inspired poet describes the travelling procession of the royal pair and fails not to dwell upon the delightful perfume of myrrh and frankincense, with all the powders of the merchant, "which make the wilderness smell as a garden of roses." Wherever the Church of Christ proceeds, though her pathway is a desert, though she marches through a howling wilderness, she scatters the richest perfume. The page of history were only worthy to be blotted in oblivion were it not for the sweet odours which the Church has left upon it. Look at all past ages, and the track of the Church is still redolent with all the richest fragrance of human virtue and divine grace. Wherever the Church advances she makes manifest the savor of the knowledge of Christ in every place! Men believe in Jesus, and unto the Lord faith has all the fragrance of myrrh. They love Jesus; and love in the esteem of heaven is better than frankincense. Loving Christ they endeavor to be like him, till patience, humility, brotherly-kindness, truthfulness, and all things that are honest, lovely, and of good repute, like "powders of the merchant," are spread abroad throughout the whole earth. Tell me where the Church is not, and I will tell you where sin reigns; tell me where Christ and his Church are carried, and I will tell you where you shall find every virtue that can adorn humanity, and every excellence that can magnify the excellence of the grace of God. If you would find an antidote for the deadly exhalations which lurk among this vorld's deserts of sin, if you would destroy the foul pestilence which reigns in the darkness of heathenism, of Popery, and of infidelity, cry unto the Mighty One—"Arise, thou unknown traveler, arise, and bid thy servants carry thee into the midst of all this misery and death! The light of thy flaming torches shall scatter the darkness, and the buming of thy precious perfumes shall say unto evil—'Fold thy wings!' and unto the pestilence of sin—'Get thee back unto thy den!'" Among the ten wonders which Jewish tradition ascribes to the temple, we find that the rain never extinguished the fire of the wood which was laid in order upon the altar, nor did the wind ever conquer the pillar of smoke so as to disperse or bend it. Verily it is so with the Church of God, as she cometh out of the wilderness: who shall quench her flaming lamp, or stay the incense of her golden censers? Ride on, Great Prince, and bear thy spouse with thee in thy majestic chariot, till thou hast lit the world with thy divine light, and hast made it a temple filled with a cloud of incense of sweet smell to the nostrils of Jehovah! II. We have, secondly, to notice THE OF CHRIST'S CHURCH AT ALL TIMES. Of course when travelling through a wilderness, a royal procession was always in danger of attack. Arabs prowled around; wandering Bedouins were always prepared to fall upon the caravan; and more especially was this the case with a marriage procession, because then the robbers might expect to obtain many jewels, or, if not, a heavy ransom for the redemption of the bride or bridegroom by their friends. What shall I say of the attacks which have been made upon the Church of Christ, and upon Christ himself? They have been incessant. When one form of evil has been routed, another has presented itself. Evil teems with children. The frogs and lice of Egypt were not more numerous than the enemies of the Lord's anointed and his bride. Every day produces new battles. These attacks arise from all quarters; sometimes from the world, and sometimes, alas! from even professed members of the Church. Adversaries lurk everywhere, and until the Church and her Lord shall be revealed in the splendor of the Millennium, having left the wilderness for ever, we must expect to find her molested on every side. My dear brethren, we know that Christ's cause in the world is always safe because of divine protection, and because the legions of God's angels keep watch and ward over the saints. But we have something more tangible than this. Our gracious God has been pleased to commit unto men the ministry of Christ. "Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak." The Lord ordaineth that chosen men should be the protectors of his Church; not that they have any power as of themselves to do anything, but He girdeth the weak with strength and maketh the feeble mighty; so then, men, even the sons of men stand in array around the travelling palanquin of Christ, to guard both the bridegroom and the bride. Read the 7th and 8th verses carefully, and you will notice that there are enough swordsmen. "Threescore valiant men are about it." There are always enough men chosen of God to guard the Church. Poor Unbelief holds up her hands and cries—"Ah! the good men are all dead; Zion is under a cloud; the Lord hath taken away the great men; we have no valiant defenders of the faith, none such as this crisis may require!" Ah! Unbelief, let the Lord say unto thee as he did unto Elias—"Yet have I left me seven-thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal." There shall be just as many warriors as the crisis shall require. We do not know where the men are to come from, but the Lord will provide. There may be sitting in the Sunday school to-day a child who shall one day shake this nation from one end to the other; there may be even here, unknown, obscure, and unobserved, the man whom God will make strong to rebuke the infamous infidelity of our age. We know not where the anointing rests. We, in our folly, would anoint Eliab or Abinadab, but God hath chosen David, the shepherd's boy, and he will bring him forth and teach him how to hurl the stone at Goliath's brow. Tremble not, neither be ye afraid; God who makes man and makes man's mouth, will find the sixty men when the sixty shall be needed. "The Lord gave the word, great was the company of them that published it." The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Observe that these warriors are men of the right mettle. "Yes," says poor trembling Little-Faith, "we have hosts of men, but they are not like the greathearts of old; they have not the qualifications which the age requires." Ah! but remember, about the bed of Solomon there are "threescore valiant men;" and glory be unto my Master, while I may not flatter the ministry, I must not dishonor him by believing that he has left his Church without valiant defenders. There are Luthers still living who bid defiance to all adversaries; men who can say, "We count not our lives dear unto us that we may finish our course with joy, and fulfill the ministry which the Lord hath delivered unto us." Fear not; you may not at present know the valor of the Lord's body-guard, but when the Church's battle grows hotter than just now, suddenly there shall be seen a champion stalking to the front of the battle, and men shall say, "Who is this? How he wields that battle-axe! How he splits the armor of his foes! See how he piles them heaps on heaps, and mounts that hill of slaughtered enemies to smite a greater foe! Who is this?" And the answer shall be, "This is a man whom God hath found; the world knew not of him, but God has trained him in the camps of Dan, and now the Spirit moveth him to smite the Philistines. "Ah!" I think I hear you say, "but though there may be so many men, and men of the right sort, I am afraid they are not in the right place." Look again at the text. It is written—"Threescore valiant men are ABOUT IT;" that is, there are some on that side, and some on this, some before, and some behind; they are all round the travelling chariot of Christ. "I wish there might be one in our parish," says one. Pray for him, and he who has promised to send you all good things may yet send him to you. "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he may send forth laborers into his harvest." It is singular how God sometimes raises a mighty man, in this denomination, then in that, and then in the other. Suppose any body of Christians should try to monopolize all the valiant men themselves; why, they could not do it, because every side of the royal bed must be guarded, and in his own place each man is set for the defense of the gospel. The Church is compassed about with mighties, who are under God to do great exploits. If the Lord guides the flight of sparrows, surely he knows how to dispose his ministers; and let the Church be well content to let them occupy their posts until the wilderness is past, and the glory shall be revealed. The Church often makes mistakes, and thinks she can make ministers, or at least choose their position. She can do no such thing. God sends the valiant man; all you can do is to recognize his valor, and accept him as your champion; beyond that you cannot go; this is God's work, not man's. A minister made by men, made valiant by human strength, had better betake himself at once ignominiously to his tent, for his disgrace will be certain. God who sends the men, knows where to put them, so that they may stand round about the bed, and leave no corner unprotected. Notice that these men are all well armed. The text says expressly, "They all hold swords." What swords are these? Every valiant man in Christ's Israel holds the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. A man who is a good textuary will usually be a good divine; he who draws from the treasury of the written word will find his spoken word to be fruitful in profit to the people of God. If we use carnal reason; if we rely upon refinement, argument, eloquence, or any other form of the wisdom of man, we shall soon find our enemies will defeat us; but to ply the Word right and left; to give gospel cuts and strokes such as the devil himself cannot parry, this is to overcome the world through the Word of God. Besides this, and here is an opportunity for you all to carry swords—every valiant man in God's Israel carries the sword of prayer, which is comparable to those huge two-handed swords of the olden time, which the soldier lifted up and brought down with such tremendous force, as to cleave a man in halves: prayer is a weapon which no man can effectually resist. If you know how to use it, bring it down upon your foeman's head, and woe unto him! I would to God that in this Church there were found many of these valiant men of Israel! Indeed, would God all the Lord's servants were prophets, that it might be said of all of you that you hold swords. Your holy lives can be swords with which to smite your enemies. The tongues with which you speak of Christ lovingly, tenderly, persuasively—these may be weapons against our common enemy. Oh that when we hear the muster roll at last, it may be said of every Church-member that he held a sword! Do not tremble, ye timid ones, for the ark of the Lord; neither let your fears promote your unbelief; God knows full well how to give the right weapons to the right men, and his Church shall be secure even to the end. Further, my brethren, these men are not only well armed, but thy are well trained. They are all expert in war; men who have endured temptations themselves; men whose souls have been exercised, men who have slain both the lion and the bear, and are men of war from their youth. Christian ministers especially should be no novices, but both in the school of temptation, and in some school of the prophets, they should be disciplined for fight. May there be such found here! I look out daily for such among you as are taught of God, and much of my time is spent with our young soldiers to make them expert in war. O that the Lord would hear my prayers and bless our college with men, and means, and above all with his Spirit. Fools are not the men for this age. We want a sound knowledge of doctrine, practical power in preaching, and a thorough insight into the human heart; and where these by earnest prayer can be found in a man and further developed by careful teaching, we are bound to give our aid. Such men should be looked after, and no pains should be spared to bring them forth; in fact, dear friends, you ought to think it a high honor to be allowed to help in putting such men into working order. Oh! how I groan to get my friends to feel the importance of sending out trained young ministers. I give my time and my substance cheerfully, but when will the Christian Church help in this matter as it should? Further, these men were not only well-trained, but you will see that they were always ready. Each man has his sword upon his thigh, ready to be drawn forth. I know some nominal ministers who seem to me to carry no sword at all. They keep a sheath, a very handsome sheath, with a hilt at the top and a stick inside. What is the good of such men? We want men to have swords in their sheaths, men who can speak with power, and have the demonstration of the Spirit and the power thereof resting upon them. Such men should wear their swords where they are to be got at, so that when the adversary comes they may dash at him at once. Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, thy Lord hath not left thee, even at this day, without some such men! Observe also that these men were watchful, for "they had their sword on their thigh because of fear in the night." They never sleep, but watch always for the Church's interest. Pray ye that the Lord may raise up many such, who night and day with tears shall watch for the souls of men, and against the enemies of our Israel. Dear friends, some of you may at times be alarmed when you hear of attacks made upon the Bible. At one time it was thought that ethnology would prove that the human race could not be one; and Moses was terribly abused by some who said it was not possible that all of us could have come of one pair. That battle was fought, and you hear nothing of it now; it is over; learning and argument in the hand of God has routed those antagonists. Then they pelted us with shells, and bones of lizards. Geology threatened to dig our graves; but we have lived all through that struggle, and we have found geology to be a great blessing, for it has shed a new light on the first chapter of Genesis, and made us understand a great deal better what it meant. Another Amalekite advances to combat; this time it is with figures and numbers; we are to be speared with arithmetic, and slain with algebra! And what will be the result of it? Why, it will do the Bible a world of good, for we shall understand it better. I thank God whenever the Bible is attacked; for all those who know the times and seasons, begin to study just that part of Scripture more carefully, and then we get a clearer light shed upon it, and we find ourselves more confirmed than ever that this is the very truth, and that God hath revealed it to us. "Well, but who will take this matter up?" I do not know, and I do not particularly care, but I know my Master has his threescore valiant men round about his bed, and that each man has his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night, and never mind what the battle may be, the end of it will be for God's glory, and there shall be progress with the chariot of Christ through that which seemed as if it must overthrow it. Cast aside your fears; rejoice, and be glad, O daughter of Zion! Thy Lord is with thee in the travelling chariot, and the threescore valiant men are watching against thy foes. III. Meanwhile, reposing in peace, let us notice THE OF THIS CHARIOT IN WHICH JESUS RIDES. It is not difficult to convey to persons the most unacquainted with Eastern manners and customs, an idea of what this palanquin is. It is a sort of large sedan in which one or two persons may recline with ease. Of course, this palanquin could not be made of gold or silver, because then it would be too heavy for carriage; it must be made of wood; hence King Solomon made a bed, or chariot, or palanquin, of the wood of Lebanon. Then there needs to be four pillars supporting the covering and the curtains; the pillars thereof are of silver. The bottom of it should be something massive, in order to sustain the weight of the person; the bottom thereof is of gold. The canopy on the top, is a covering of purple. Since to lie on gold would be very unpleasant, it is covered with delicate, daintily wrought carpets; and so we have the bottom thereof paved, or rather carpeted with love for the daughters of Jerusalem. Some delicate devices of needlework adorn the bottom of this bed-chariot in which the king and his spouse recline during their journey. The doctrines of the gospel are comparable, for their antiquity, for their sweet fragrance, for their incorruptibility, to the wood of Lebanon. The gospel of Christ never decays; Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Not one single truth, bears any sign of rot. And to those souls that are enlightened from above, the gospel gives forth a fragrance far richer than the wood of Lebanon. "No beams of cedar or of fir, Can with thy precious truth compare." I rejoice to know concerning you as a Church, that the more you understand the doctrines of grace the better you love them. You are confirmed in the present faith, and well you may be, for our doctrine is worthy of your confidence. We are not afraid that any truth which Christ has uttered should be tried by the most stringent criticism, for not one single stone of all the bulwarks of Gospel doctrine can ever be removed out of its place. When cedars of Lebanon have yielded to the worm, even then shall the truth as it is in Jesus remain the same. As for the silver pillars which bear up the canopy, to what should I liken them but to the attributes of God which support and guarantee the efficiency of the great atonement of Christ beneath which we are sheltered. There is the silver pillar of God's justice. He cannot, he will not smite the soul that hides beneath the cross of Christ. If Christ hath paid the debt, how is it possible that God should visit again a second time the iniquity of his people, first on their Surety, and then again on themselves? Then stands the next, the solid pillar of his power. "They shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand; my Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." Then on the other side is the pillar of his love, a silver pillar indeed, bright and sparkling to the eye; love unchanging and eternal, strong as the power and fast as the justice which bear up the canopy on the other side. And here on this side stands immutability, another column upon which the atonement rests. If God could change, then might he cast away his blood-bought; but "because I am God and change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob rejoice." As for the covering of the chariot, it is of purple. I need not tell you where it was dyed. No Tyrian hues are mingled here. Look up, Christian, and delight thyself in that blood-red canopy which shelters thee from the sun by day and from the moon by night! From hell and heaven, from time and from eternity, art thou secured by this covering which is of purple. Oh! tempting theme to dilate upon the precious and glorious doctrine of atonement! Whenever our adversaries assail the Church, whatever may be the apparent object of their animosity, their real one is always the same, a desperate hatred to the great truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Well, as they hate it, let us love it; and under it let us take our greatest delight. As for the bottom of this palanquin, which is of gold,—may not this represent the eternal purpose and counsel of God, that purpose which he formed in himself or ever the earth was? Pure was the decree of God, holy, wise, just, for his own glory, and most true; and as the precious things of the temple were all of gold, well may the basis of eternal love, an immutable and unchangeable decree, be compared to much fine gold. I do not know, brethren, how it is with you, but I find it most pleasant to have as the basis of my hope, the firm decree of God. Atonement covers me, I know, but still on this I must rest, Jehovah wills it; God decrees it; he hath said it, and it must be done; he hath commanded and it standeth fast. Oh! that golden sovereignty, whereon is written—"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy; it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth." Dear brethren, the Apostle plainly tells us that this is the basis on which even the silver pillars rest, "for he hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus, according as he hath chosen us in him from before the foundation of the world." Then, to make this all soft and pleasant to recline upon, here is pavement of needlework. Soft cushions of love on which to rest. There is a double meaning here, for both the bride and bridegroom find rest in love. Our Lord finds rest in the love of his people. "Here will I dwell for ever." They do, as it were, make these carpets of needle-work in their love and affection for him, and in their trust and confidence in him; and here he rests. On the other hand, our Beloved spent his life to work for us our bed of rest, so that we must translate it "love of," as well as love for the daughters of Jerusalem." We rest in Christ's love; he rests in our love. Come, I need not explain further, brothers and sisters. Take your rest now to the full. You are married unto Christ; you are one with him; betrothed unto him in faithfulness, embraced in the arms of his affection. Fear not the noise of archers; the "threescore valiant men" protect you, and the king himself embraces you; now solace yourself with him; take your full of his sweet society, and say unto him from the bottom of your heart, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for his love is better than wine." Leave fighting for the evidences to the valiant men who can do it; as for you, ye daughters of Jerusalem, rest upon your Lord's bosom; leave conflict to the men ordained to fight, the men expert in war; as for you, be you expert in communion; understand the motions of Jesus' heart; look unto the lustre of his loving eyes; behold his beauties; be ravished with his divine affection to you; and now let your soul be satisfied with favor, and be full of the lovingkindness of the Lord! IV. We close, then, by noticing THE DUTY OF EVERY HEART newest in connection with the subject. Let every believer, while he recognizes himself as part of the Church inside the palanquin, yet look upon himself personally as one of the daughters of Zion, and let us each go forth this morning to meet King Solomon. It is not King David; King David is the type of Christ up to the time of his crucifixion—"despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," and yet King of the Jews. King Solomon is the type of Christ ever since the day when "They brought his chariot from above, To bear him to his throne." and, with sound of trumpet, conducted him to his Father's presence-chamber above. Now it is King Solomon; King Solomon for wealth, for wisdom, for dignity, for honor, for peace. He is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and therefore is he King Solomon going forth. Get up from your beds of sloth; rise from your chambers of ease; go forth, go forth to pray, to labor, to suffer; go forth to live in purity, leaving Babylon behind; go forth to walk with him alone, leaving even your kinsfolk and acquaintance if they will not follow with you. Wherefore tarriest thou at home when the King is abroad? "Behold the Bridegroom cometh, come ye forth to meet him," and behold King Solomon. To-day let your eye rest upon him. Let your eye behold the head that to-day is crowned with glory, wearing many crowns. Behold ye, too, his hands which once were pierced, but are now grasping the scepter. Look to his girdle where swing the keys of heaven, and death, and hell. Look to his feet, once pierced with iron, but now set upon the dragon's head. Behold his legs, like fine brass, as if they glowed in a furnace. Look at his heart, that bosom which heaves with love to you, and when you have surveyed him from head to foot exclaim, "Yea, he is the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely." Does sin prevail? Behold King Solomon. Have doubts and fears arisen? Behold King Jesus. Are you troubled, and does your enemy annoy you? Look up to him, behold king Solomon. I pray you remember the light in which you are to behold him. Do not think that Christ has lost his former power. Behold him as he was at Pentecost, with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals. Oh! how glorious was our Lord when the Church crowned him with her zeal, and the arrows went abroad, and three thousand fell slain by his right hand to be made alive by the breath of his mouth! Oh, how these early saints crowned him, when they brought of their substance and laid it at the apostle's feet, neither did any man count that ought he had was his own. They crowned him with their heart's purest love; the Church had on her brow her bridal-wreath, and her husband wore his nuptial crown. Behold him to-day as wearing that crown still, for he is the same Christ, and do you go forth to meet him, and labor for him, and love him as the first saints did. Forget not that his mother is to crown him soon in the day of his espousals. He is our brother as well as our husband, and the Church is his mother as well as ours. Oh! she is to crown him soon! The day of his espousals draweth nigh. Hark! I hear the trumpet sound! Jesus comes, and his feet stand upon Mount Olivet; kings and princes lick the dust before him; he gathers sheaves of sceptres beneath his arm even as the mower gathereth wheat with the sickle. He treadeth on principalities and powers, the young lion and the dragon doth he trample under foot. And now his saints cry, "Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." The long-expected one is come, and his mother crowns him in the day of his espousals! Courage, poor heart, courage! Go forth and see King Solomon to-day as he is to lie, and remember, "It doth not yet appear How great we shall be made; But when we see our Savior here, We shall be like our Head." When we look on Him; let us rejoice that this is to be our glory. We are to put off this sackcloth and put on scarlet and fine linen. The dust is to be wiped from our brow and the sweat from our face; the shackles are to be taken from our wrist, and the gyves from our legs; and we are to be emancipated, ennobled, glorified, made partners with Christ in all his splendor, and taught to reign with him world without end. But there are some here that I can hardly call the daughters of Jerusalem, yet they are always round about Zion's gate. Oh, there are many of you who are always listening to our voice, and joining in our hymns, and yet you have not seen our Master yet! Go forth; leave your sinful pleasures, and leave your self-righteousness too; go forth and behold King Solomon. Look to Jesus, sinner, bleeding on the cross, and as thou lookest, love and trust; and I know that as soon as thou hast seen him and trusted him, thou wilt have a crown to put upon his head. It will be the day of thine espousal unto him, and thou wilt crown him with such a crown. Thou wilt decorate that crown with jewels dug from the secret mine of thy deepest heart, and having made this crown, thou wilt put it on his head, and fall down before him and sing— "All hail the power of Jesu's name, Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown him Lord of all." Well, then, we will lay aside every fear, and continue all the day gazing upon our matchless Christ, adoring him, exalting him, and having fellowship with him; for all is well; his travelling chariot is always safe, and soon will he step out of it with his bride at his right hand, and the world shall be astonished to behold the beauties of the royal pair when he shall be exalted, and they that are with him, before the presence of his Father and all the holy angels! This is a chapter which is, perhaps, more adapted for private meditation than for rending in public. Nevertheless, as this is a communion season, and I trust that the most of us are partakers of the life of God, I could not resist reading it this evening. It is a love-song, the song of the loves of Jesus. As he sets forth the beauties and charms of his Church, may the like beauties and charms be found in every one of us through the grace which he imparts to us by his Spirit! May we, as parts of his mystical body, be fair and lovely in his esteem because he has bestowed upon us so much of his own loveliness! Let us walk so carefully with God that there may be nothing to put even a spot upon our garments, or to defile our grace-given comeliness.Son 4:1. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair;“Twice fair, first, through being washed in my blood, and next, through being sanctified by my Spirit!”Son 4:1. Thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks:Jesus prizes the love of his people which flashes forth from their eyes as they look upon him. The good works of his people, like the locks of hair which are the beauty and glory of the female form, are the beauty of the Church, and of every individual believer. It is a beautiful thing to have the eyes of faith glistening between the locks of our good works to the praise and glory of God.Son 4:1. Thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.O my soul, see that thou dost have many such acceptable works of faith and labours of love!Son 4:2. Thy teeth —Those parts of our spiritual being with which we feed upon Christ, and masticate and assimilate the Word: “Thy teeth “ —Son 4:2. 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. We should seek so to feed upon the Word as to become fruitful by it. If we spiritually feed upon the flesh of Christ, we shall afterwards be the means of bringing forth an abundant harvest of holiness to his praise and honour.Son 4:3. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet,And well they may be, for what is there for the believer to talk about but the scarlet of the Saviour’s blood, that matchless bath in which we are washed whiter than snow? My mouth, be thou filled with the praises of the Lord, that my lips may be like a thread of scarlet!Son 4:3. And thy speech is comely:There is always a comeliness in that conversation which is full of Christ so, beloved, let your conversation ever be such as becometh the gospel of Christ; but that cannot be the case unless there is much of Christ in it.Son 4:3. Thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.Those parts of us with which we think upon God’s Word should ever be surrounded by good works. Doctrines in the head, without holiness in the life, are of no service, but when the temples are covered with the locks of righteousness, then are they like a piece of a pomegranate, acceptable both to God and men.Son 4:4. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, And what is this but our faith? Does not the neck join the body to the head, and is not faith that connecting link by which we are united to Christ? Oh, for that faith which is like the tower of David builded for an armoury! It is sure to be assaulted, let it, therefore, be firmly founded, and fully armed.Son 4:4. Whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.They hung up their bucklers in memory of their triumphs. Read the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is a record of the victories of faith. The promises of God are also like these bucklers which are hung up in the armoury; let us be so familiar with them that we shall have them ready for use in every emergency.Son 4:5. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. The ordinances of God’s house are very delightful to Christ, and to his people too; and, consequently, that part of our spiritual being which seeks to feed others, and specially to nourish the young believer, is very precious in Christ’s esteem. When he has finished the description of his Church, Christ says: —Son 4:6. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.Our Beloved has gone away from us until the day of his reappearing, —until the night of his Church’s anxiety is over, and the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings Jesus has gone from earth, but where is he? He has gone to intercede for us before the throne of his Father above; he has gone to where there are mountains of myrrh. Think, beloved, of the sweet perfume that ever arises from his one great sacrifice for sins; well may he compare it to a mountain of myrrh and to a hill of frankincense.Son 4:7. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.Drink that truth in, Christian. If ever there was a honeycomb full of virgin honey, it is here. Though in thyself thou art defiled, yet in the eye of Jesus, looked upon as covered with his righteousness, “thou art all fair;” nay, more, “there is no spot in thee.” Thou art as dear to him as though thou hadst never sinned, yea, in his sight, thou appearest without a single fault, he has so cleansed thee in his precious blood that “there is no spot in thee.”Son 4:8. 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.My heart, leave thou the world, leave its sweet places, though Lebanon be full of fragrance, leave it. Leave the world’s high places; though the top of Amana may seem to reach to heaven, leave even that to have communion with thy Lord. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing.” The best spots in the world are to you, O Spouse of Christ, but lions’ dens and mountains of leopards. You are always in danger while you consort with worldlings, you are ever in peril while you are entangled with the world; so come away from Lebanon, from Amana, from Shenir and Hermon; leave everything for your Lord.Son 4:9. Thou hast ravished my heart, —I think the Septuagint reads it, “Thou hast unhearted me,” as if Christ’s people had taken away his heart, so that it was all theirs, and not his any longer. “Thou hast ravished my heart,” —Son 4:9. My sister my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.The eye of love, and the neck of faith with its chain, hold captive the heart of Christ. “So dear, so very dear to Christ, Dearer I cannot be; The love wherewith God loves his sons, Such is Christ’s love to me.” Oh, what a miracle of mercy it is that Christ himself should be unhearted by such foul and loathsome creatures as we were, yet he loved us so that he would have us; and having determined to do so, he put a beauty upon us that is really now worthy of his love. I speak advisedly, for the righteousness of Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit have in them something really so fair that Christ does not now love that which is unworthy of his love, that righteousness which he has himself wrought in us now rightly claims his affection.Son 4:10. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! Hearest thou that, O Spouse of Christ? Thy love is often very cold, and very feeble, and even at the best it is not what thou wouldst have it to be, nor what it ought to be; yet Jesus values it highly, and says, “How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! “Son 4:10. How much better is thy love than wine!Yet he knows what the best wine is like, for he is one day to drink it new with us in his Father’s kingdom, yet he says that the love of his people is much better than wine, yes, even than that wine.Son 4:10. And the smell of thine ointments than all spices!You know that he has the smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia upon his garments when he comes out of the ivory palaces, yet he considers that his people’s graces are sweeter than all the spices that ever grew.Son 4:11-12. 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. A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Oh, that my heart were like that at this moment! Jesus, shut the gates, and shut out the world, and every wandering, wayward, sinful thought; then shut thyself in my heart, and walk thou in it as in a garden that is walled around, into which no intruders dare enter!Son 4:13-14. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:Oh, that this were fully true of us, — that all our thoughts, and words, and notions, which are like the fruits of the garden, were as full of spices of heavenly fragrance as Jesus here declares that he thinks them to be! Yet, alas! how little we do for him, though he sets such store by our little that he regards it as much.Son 4:15. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.Such should the whole Church and each individual believer be. O my soul, be thou not only shut up for Christ, but be thou when the time comes, opened to do good to all the world! Oh, that I might be like a well of living waters in my speech at all times; and that you, my beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, whenever you are dealing with others, might be a well of living waters to every thirsty soul! Speak of Jesus wherever you go; talk of Jesus whenever you can. You have been shut up, and Christ has been in you; now be opened to give forth to others what he has given you. The chapter concludes with a delightful prayer; let us each one pray it: —Son 4:16. 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. The Church here, you see, desires to feel two opposite winds. Though it should be the rough north wind of affliction that blows upon her, if it will but make her spices flow, she will be glad; but if it be the soft south wind of blessed and hallowed fellowship with her Lord, she is equally pleased, for what she longs after is that her Lord may take delight in her. Heavenly Love-Sickness! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Sermon (No. 539) Delivered on Sunday Morning, November 8th, 1863, by the Rev. C. H. , At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love."— Son 5:8 . SICK! THAT IS A SAD THING; it moves your pity. Sick of love—love-sick! that stirs up other emotions which we shall presently attempt to explain. No doubt certain sicknesses are peculiar to the saints: the ungodly are never visited with them. Strange to say, these sicknesses, to which the refined sensibilities of the children of God render them peculiarly liable, are signs of vigorous health. Who but the beloved of the Lord ever experience that sin-sickness in which the soul loathes the very name of transgression, is unmoved by the enchantments of the tempter, finds no sweetness in its besetting sins, but turns with detestation and abhorrence from the very thought of iniquity? Not less is it for these, and these alone, to feel that self-sickness whereby the heart revolts from all creature-confidence and strength, having been made sick of self, self-seeking, self-exalting, self-reliance, and self of every sort. The Lord afflicts us more and more with such self-sickness till we are dead to self, its puny conceits, its lofty aims, and its unsanctified desires. Then there is a twofold love-sickness. Of the one kind is that love-sickness which comes upon the Christian when he is transported with the full enjoyment of Jesus, even as the bride elated by the favor, melted by the tenderness of her Lord, says in the fifth verse of the second chapter of the Song, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." The soul overjoyed with the divine communications of happiness and bliss which came from Christ, the body scarcely able to bear the excessive delirium of delight which the soul possessed, she was so glad to be in the embraces of her Lord, that she needed to be stayed under her overpowering weight of joy. Another kind of love-sickness widely different from the first, is that in which the soul is sick, not because it has too much of Christ's love, but because it has not enough present consciousness of it; sick, not of the enjoyment, but of the longing for it; sick, not because of excess of delight, but because of sorrow for an absent lover. It is to this sickness we call your attention this morning. Their love-sickness breaks out in two ways, and may be viewed in two lights. It is, first of all, the soul longing for a view of Jesus Christ in grace; and then again, it is the same soul possessing the view of grace, and longing for a sight of Jesus Christ in glory. In both these senses we, us accurately as the spouse, may adopt the languishing words, "If ye find my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." I. First, then, let us consider our text as the language of a soul LONGING FOR THE VIEW OF JESUS CHRIST IN GRACE. 1. Do ye ask me concerning the sickness itself: What is it? It is the sickness of a soul panting after communion with Christ. The man is a believer; he is not longing after salvation as a penitent sinner under conviction, for he is saved. Moreover, he has love to Christ, and knows it; he does not doubt his evidence as to the reality of his affection for his Lord, for you see the word used is "My beloved," which would not be applicable if the person speaking had any doubt about her interest; nor did she doubt her love, for she calls the spouse, "My beloved." It is the longing of a soul, then, not for salvation, and not even for the certainty of salvation, but for the enjoyment of present fellowship with him who is her soul's life, her soul's all. The heart is panting to be brought once more under the apple tree; to feel once again his "left hand under her head, while his right hand doth embrace her." She has known, in days past, what it is to be brought into his banqueting-house, and to see the banner of love waved over her, and she therefore crieth to have love visits renewed. It is a panting after communion. Gracious hours, my dear friends, are never perfectly at ease except they are in a state of nearness to Christ; for mark you, when they are not near to Christ, they lose their peace. The nearer to Jesus, the nearer to the perfect calm of heaven; and the further from Jesus, the nearer to that troubled sea which images the continual unrest of the wicked. There is no peace to the man who doth not dwell constantly under the shadow of the cross; for Jesus is our peace, and if he be absent, our peace is absent too. I know that being justified, we have peace with God, but it is "through our Lord Jesus Christ." So that the justified man himself cannot reap the fruit of justification, except by abiding in Christ Jesus, who is the Lord and Giver of peace. The Christian without fellowship with Christ loses all his life and energy; he is like a dead thing. Though saved, he lies like a lumpish log— "His soul can neither fly nor go To reach eternal joys." He is without vivacity, yea, more, he is without animation till Jesus comes; but when the Lord sensibly sheds abroad his love in our hearts, then his love kindles ours; then our blood leaps in our veins for joy, like the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth. The heart when near to Jesus has strong pulsations, for since Jesus is in that heart, it is full of life, of vigor, and of strength. Peace, liveliness, vigor—all depend upon the constant enjoyment of communion with Christ Jesus. The soul of a Christian never knows what joy means in its true solidity, except when she sits like Mary at Jesus' feet. Beloved, all the joys of life are nothing to us; we have melted them all down in our crucible, and found them to be dross. You and I have tried earth's vanities, and they cannot satisfy us; nay, they do not give a morsel of meat to satiate our hunger. Being in a state of dissatisfaction with all mortal things, we have learned through divine grace, that none but Jesus, none but Jesus can make our souls glad. "Philosophers are happy without music" said one of old. So Christians are happy without the world's good. Christians, with the world's good, are sure to bemoan themselves as naked, poor, and miserable, unless their Savior be with them. You that have ever tasted communion with Christ, will soon know why it is that a soul longs after him. What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us. What bread is to the hungry, clothes to the naked, the shadow of a great rock to the traveler in a weary land, such is Jesus Christ to us. What the turtle is to her mate, what the husband is to his spouse, what the head is to the body, such is Jesus Christ to us; and therefore, if we have him not, nay, if we are not conscious of having him; if we are not one with him, nay, if we are not consciously one with him, little marvel if our spirit cries in the words of the Song, "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." Such is the character of this love-sickness. We may say of it, however, before we leave that point, that it is a sickness which has a blessing attending it: "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness;" and therefore, supremely blessed are they who thirst after the Righteous One—after him, who in the highest perfection embodies pure, immaculate, spotless righteousness. Blessed is that hunger, for it comes from God. It bears a blessing within it; for if I may not have the blessedness in full bloom of being filled, the next best thing is the same blessedness in sweet bud of being empty till I am filled with Christ. If I may not feed on Jesus, it shall be next door to heaven to be allowed to hunger and thirst after him. There is a hallowedness about that hunger, since it sparkles among the beatitudes of our Lord. Yet it is a sickness, dear friends, which, despite the blessing, causes much pain. The man who is sick after Jesus, will be dissatisfied with everything else; he will find that dainties have lost their sweetness, and music its melody, and light its brightness, and life itself will be darkened with the shadow of death to him, till he finds his Lord, and can rejoice in him. Beloved, ye shall find that this thirsting, this sickness, if it ever gets hold upon you, is attended with great vehemence. The desire is vehement, as coals of juniper. Ye have heard of hunger that it breaks through stone walls: but stone walls are no prison to a soul that desires Christ. Stone walls, nay, the strongest natural barriers, cannot keep a lovesick heart from Jesus. I will venture to say that the temptation of heaven itself, if it could be offered to the believer without his Christ, would be as less than nothing; and the pains of hell, if they could be endured, would be gladly ventured upon by a love-sick soul, if he might but find Christ. As lovers sometimes talk of doing impossibilities for their fair ones, so certainly a spirit that is set on Christ will laugh at impossibility, and say, "It shall be done." It will venture upon the hardest task, go cheerfully to prison and joyfully to death, if it may but find its beloved, and have its love-sickness satisfied with his presence. Perhaps this may suffice for a description of the sickness here intended. 2. Ye may enquire concerning the cause of this love-sickness. What maketh a man's soul so sick after Christ? Understand that it is the absence of Christ which makes this sickness in a mind that really understands the preciousness of his presence. The spouse had been very wilful and wayward, she had taken off her garments, had gone to her rest, her sluggish slothful rest, when her beloved knocked at the door. He said "Open to me, my beloved; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night." She was too slothful to wake up to let him in. She urged excuses—"I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet: how shall I defile them?" The beloved stood waiting, but since she opened not he put in his hand by the hole of the lock, and then her bowels were moved towards him. She went to the door to open it, and to her surprise, her hands dropped with myrrh, and her fingers with sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock. There was the token that he had been there, but he was gone. Now she began to bestir herself, and seek after him. She sought him through the city, but she found him not. Her soul failed her; she called after him, but he gave her no answer, and the watchman, who ought to have helped her in the search, smote her, and took away her veil from her. Therefore it is that now she is seeking, because she has lost her beloved. She should have held him fast, and not have permitted him to go. He is absent, and she is sick till she findeth him. Mingled with the sense of absence is a consciousness of wrong doing. Something in her seemed to say, "How couldst thou drive him away? That heavenly bridegroom who knocked and pleaded hard, how couldst thou keep him longer there amidst the cold dews of night? O unkind heart! what if thy feet had been made to bleed by thy rising? What if all thy body had seen chilled by the cold wind, when thou wast treading the floor? What had it been compared with his love to thee?" And so she is sick to see him, that she may weep out her love and tell him how vexed she is with herself that she should have held to him so loosely, and permitted him so readily to depart. So, too, mixed with this, was great wretchedness because he was gone. She had been for a little time easy in his absence. That downy bed, that warm coverlet, had given her a peace, a false, cruel, and a wicked peace, but she has risen now, the watchmen have smitten her, her veil is gone, and, without a friend, the princess, deserted in the midst of Jerusalem's streets, has her soul melted for heaviness, and she pours out her heart within her as she pineth after her lord. "No love but my love, no lord but my lord," saith she, with sobbing tongue and weeping eyes; for none else can gratify her heart or appease her anxiety. Beloved, have you never been in such a state, when your faith has begun to droop, and your heart and spirits have fled from you? Even then it was your soul was sick for him. You could do without him when Mr. Carnal-security was in the house, and feasted you, but when he and his house have both been burned with fire, the old love-sickness came back, and you wanted Christ, nor could ye be satisfied till ye found him once again. There was true love in all this, and this is the very pith of all love-sickness. Had not she loved, absence would not have made her sick, nor would her repentance have made her grieve. Had she not loved, there would have been no pain because of absence, and no sinking of spirits, but she did love, thence all this sickness. It is a delightful thing to be able to know when we have lost Christ's company, that we do love him—"'Yea, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.' I did deny thee, yea, in the moment of thy sorrow, I said, 'I know not the man.' I did curse and swear that men might think I was no follower of thine, but still thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." When you can feel this, dear friends, the consciousness that you love will soon work in you a heart-burning, so that your soul will not be satisfied till you can tell out that love in the Master's presence, and he shall say unto you, as a token of forgiveness, "Feed my sheep." I do not doubt that in this sickness there had been some degree of fear. Sorrowful woman! She was half afraid she might never find him again. She had been about the city—where could he be? She had sought him on the walls and on the ramparts, but he was not there. In every ordinance, in every means of grace, in secret and in public prayer, in the Lord's Supper, and in the reading of the Word, she had looked after him, but he was not there; and now she was half afraid that though he might give his presence to others, yet never to her, and when she speaks, you notice there is half a fear in it. She would not have asked others to tell him if she had any assuring hope that she should meet him herself—"If ye find him," she seems to say, "O ye true converts, you that are the real grace-bow daughters of Jerusalem; if he reveals himself to you, though he never may to me, do me this kindness, tell him that I am sick of love." There is half a fear here, and yet there is some hope. She feels that he must love her still, or else why send a message at all? She would surely never send this sweet message to a flinty, adamantine heart, "Tell him I am sick of love," but she remembered when the glancings of her eyes had ravished him; she remembered when a motion from her hand had made his heart melt, and when one tear of her eyes had opened all his wounds afresh. She thinks, "Perhaps, he loves me still as he loved me then, and my moanings will enchain him; my groans will constrain him and lead him to my help." So she sends the message to him—"Tell him, tell him I am sick of love." To gather up the causes of this love-sickness in a few words, does not the whole matter spring from relationship? She is his spouse; can the spouse be happy without her beloved lord? It springs from union; she is part of himself. Can the hand be happy and healthy if the life-floods stream not from the heart and from the head. Fondly realizing her dependence, she feels that she owes all to him, and gets her all from him. If then the fountain be cut off, if the streams be dried, if the great source of all be taken from her, how can she but be sick? And there is besides this, a life and a nature in her which makes her sick. There is a life like the life of Christ, nay, her life is in Christ, it is hid with Christ in God; her nature is a part of the divine nature; she is a partaker of the divine nature. Moreover she is in union with Jesus, and this piece divided, as it were, from the body, wriggles, like a worm cut asunder, and pants to get back to where it came from. These are the causes of it. You will not understand my sermon this morning but think me raving, unless you are spiritual men. "But the spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." 3. What endeavors such love-sick souls will put forth. Those who are sick for Christ will first send their desires to him. Men use pigeons sometimes to send their messages. Why, what sort of carrier pigeons do they use? The pigeon is of no use to send anywhere but to the place from which it came, and my desires after Christ came from him, and so they will always go back to the place from which they came, they know the way to their own dovecot, so I will send him my sighs and my groans, my tears and my moans. Go, go, sweet doves, with swift and clipping wings, and tell him I am sick of love. Then she would send her prayers. Ah! methinks she would say of her desires, "They will never reach him; they know the way but their wings are broken, and they will fall to the ground and never reach him." Yet she will send them whether they reach him or not. As for her prayers, they are like arrows. Sometimes messages have been sent into besieged towns bound to an arrow, so she binds her desires upon the arrow of her prayers, and then shoots them forth from the bow of her faith. She is afraid they will never reach him, for her bow is slack, and she knoweth not how to draw it with her feeble hands which hang down. So what does she? She has traversed the streets; she has used the means; she has done everything; she has sighed her heart out, and emptied her soul out in prayers. She is all wounds till he heals her; she is all a hungry mouth till he fills her; she is all an empty brook till he replenishes her once again, and so now she goeth to her companions, and she saith, "If ye find my beloved, tell him I am sick of love." This is using the intercession of the saints. It is unbelief that makes her use it, and yet there is a little faith mixed in her unbelief. It was an unbelief but not a misbelief. There is efficacy in the intercession of saints. Not of dead saints—they have enough to do to be singing God's praises in heaven without praying for us—but saints on earth can take up our case. The king has his favourites; he has his cup-bearers; he has some that are admitted into great familiarity with him: give me a share in a good man's prayers. I attribute under God the success the Lord has given me, to the number of souls in every quarter of the earth who pray for me—not you alone, but in every land there are some that forget me not when they draw near in their supplications. Oh! we are so rich when we have the prayers of saints. When it is well with thee, speak for me to the Captain of the host, and if he should say to thee, "What was his message?" I have no other message but that of the spouse, "Tell him I am sick of love." Any of you who have close familiarity with Jesus, be the messengers, be the heavenly tale-bearers between love-sick souls and their divine Lord. Tell him, tell him we are sick of love. And you that cannot thus go to him, do seek the help and aid of others. But after all, as I have said this is unbelief though it is not misbelief, for how much better it would have been for her to tell him herself. "But," you say, "she could not find him." Nay, but if she had had faith she would have known that her prayers could; for our prayers know where Christ is when we do not know, or rather, Christ knows where our prayers are, and when we cannot see him they reach him nevertheless. A man who fires a cannon is not expected to see all the way which the shot goes. If he has his cannon rightly sighted and fires it, there may come on a thick fog, but the shot will reach the place; and if you have your hearts sighted by divine grace after Christ, you may depend upon it, however thick the fog, the hot-shot of your prayer will reach the gates of heaven though ye cannot tell how or where. Be ye satisfied to go to a Christ yourself. If your brethren will go, well and good, but methinks their proper answer to your question would be in the language of the women in the sixth chapter, the first verse, "Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee." They will not seek him for us they say, but they can seek him with us. Sometimes when there are six pair of eyes, they will see better than one; and so, if five or six Christians seek the Lord in company, in the prayer-meeting, or at his table, they are more likely to find him. "We will seek him with thee." 4. Blessed love-sickness! we have seen its character and its cause, and the endeavors of the soul under it; let us just notice the comforts which belong to such a state as this. Briefly they are these—you shall be filled. It is impossible for Christ to set you longing after him without intending to give himself to you. It is as when a great man doth make a feast. He first puts plates upon the table, and then afterwards there cometh the meat. Your longings and desirings are the empty plates to hold the meat. Is it likely that he means to mock you? Would he have put the dishes there if he did not intend to fill them with his oxen and with his fatlings? He makes you long: he will certainly satisfy your longings. Remember, again, that he will give you himself all the sooner for the bitterness of your longings. The more pained your heart is at his absence the shorter will the absence be. If you have a grain of contentment without Christ, that will keep you longer tarrying but when your soul is sick till your heart is ready to break, till you cry, "Why tarrieth he? why are his chariots so long in coming?" when your soul fainteth until your beloved speaks unto you, and you are ready to die from your youth up, then in no long space he will lift the veil from his dear face, and your sun shall rise with healing beneath his wings. Let that console you. Then, again, when he does come, as come he will, oh, how sweet it will be! Methinks I have the flavour in my mouth now, and the fullness of the feast is yet to come. There is such a delight about the very thought that he will come, that the thought itself is the prelude, the foretaste, the antepast of the happy greeting. What! Will he once again speak comfortably to me? Shall I again walk the bed of spices with him? Shall I ramble with him amongst the groves while the flowers give forth their sweet perfume: I shall! I shall! and even now my spirit feels his presence by anticipation: "Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib." You know how sweet it was in the past. Beloved, what times we have had, some of us. Oh, whether in the body or out of the body, we cannot tell—God knoweth. What mountings! Talk ye of eagles' wings—they are earthly pinions, and may not be compared with the wings with which he carried us up from earth. Speak of mounting beyond clouds and stars!—they were left far, far behind. We entered into the unseen, beheld the invisible, lived in the immortal, drank in the ineffable, and were blessed with the fullness of God in Christ Jesus, being made to sit together in heavenly places in him. Well, all this is to come again, "I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice." "A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me." "In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer." Think of this. Why, we have comfort even in this sickness of love. Our heart, though sick, is still whole, while we are panting and pining after the Lord Jesus. "O love divine, how sweet thou art, When shall I find my willing heart All taken up with thee? I thirst, I faint, I die to prove The fullness of redeeming love— The love of Christ to me." II. And now, secondly, with as great brevity as we can. This love-sickness may be seen in A SOUL-LONGING FOR A VIEW OF JESUS IN HIS GLORY. 1. And here we will consider the complaint itself for a moment. This ailment is not merely a longing after communion with Christ on earth—that has been enjoyed, and generally this sickness follows that:— "When I have tasted of the grapes, I sometimes long to go Where my dear Lord the vineyard keeps And all the clusters grow." It is the enjoyment of Eshcol's first fruits which makes us desire to sit under our own vine and our own fig tree before the throne of God in the blessed land. Beloved, this sickness is characterized by certain marked symptoms; I will tell you what they are. There is a loving and a longing, a loathing and a languishing. Happy soul that understands these things by experience. There is a loving in which the heart cleaves to Jesus:— "Do not I love thee from my soul? Then let me nothing love: Dead be my heart to every joy When Jesus cannot move." A sense of his beauty! an admiration of his charms! a consciousness of his infinite perfection! Yea; greatness, goodness, and loveliness, in one resplendent ray combine to enchant the soul till it is so ravished after him that it crieth with the spouse, "Yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O ye daughters of Jerusalem." Sweet loving this—a love which binds the heart with chains of more than silken softness, and yet than adamant more firm. Then there is a longing. She loves him so that she cannot endure to be absent from him; she pants and pines. You know it has been so with saints in all ages; whenever they have begun to love they have always begun to long after Christ. John, the most loving of spirits, is the author of those words which he so frequently uses—"Come quickly, even so, come quickly." "Come quickly" is sure to be the fruit of earnest love. See how the spouse puts it—"O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised." She longs to get hold of him; she cannot conclude her song without saying, "Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices." There is a longing to be with Christ. I would not give much for your religion if you do not long to be with the object of your heart's affections. Then comes a loathing. When a man is sick with the first lovesickness, then he does not loathe—it is, "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." When a man has Christ, he can enjoy other things; but when a man is longing after Christ and seeking after Christ, he loathes everything else—he cannot bear anything besides. Here is my message to Jesus: "Tell him—" what? Do I want crowns and diadems? crowns and diadems are nought to me. Do I want wealth, and health, and strength? they are all very well in their way. No—"Tell him, tell the beloved of my soul that I grieve after himself—his gifts are good—I ought to be more grateful for them than I am, but let me see his face; let me hear his voice. I am sick of love, and nothing but that can satisfy me, everything else is distasteful to me." And then there is a languishing. Since she cannot get the society of Christ, cannot as yet behold him on his throne nor worship him face to face, she is sick until she can. For a heart so set on Christ will walk about traversing highway and by-way, resting nowhere till it finds him. As the needle once magnetized will never be easy until it finds the pole, so the heart once Christianized never will be satisfied until it rests on Christ—rests on him, too, in the fullness of the beatific vision before the throne. This is the character of the love-sickness. 2. As to its object—what is that? "Tell him that I am sick of love;" but what is the sickness for? Brethren, when you and I want to go to heaven I hope it is the true love-sickness. I catch myself sometimes wanting to die and be in heaven for the sake of rest; but is not that a lazy desire? There is a sluggish wish that makes me long for rest. Perhaps, we long for the happiness of heaven—the harps and crowns. There is a little selfishness in that, is there not? Allowable, I grant you; but is not there a little like selfishness? Perhaps, we long to see dear children, beloved friends that have gone before; but there is a little of the earthy there. The soul may be as sick as it will, without rebuke, when it is sick to be with Jesus. You may indulge this carry it to its utmost extent without either sin or folly. What am I sick with love for? For the pearly gates?—No; but for the pearls that are in his wounds. What am I sick for? For the streets of gold?—No; but for his head which is as much fine gold. For the melody of the harps and angelic songs?—No, but for the melodious notes that come from his dear mouth. What am I sick for? For the nectar that angels drink?—No; but for the kisses of his lips. For the manna on which heavenly souls do feed?—No; but for himself, who is the meat and drink of his saints himself, himself—my soul pines to see him. Oh, what a heaven to gaze upon! What bliss to talk with the man, the God, crucified for me; to weep my heart out before him; to tell him how I love him, for he loved me and gave himself for me; to read my name written on his hands and on his side—yea, and to let him see that his name is written on my heart in indelible lines; to embrace him, oh! what an embrace when the creature shall embrace his God—to be for ever so close to him, that not a doubt, nor a fear, nor a wandering thought can come between my soul and him for ever— "For ever to behold him shine, For evermore to call him mine, And see him still before me; For ever on his face to gaze, And meet his full assembled rays, While all the Father he displays To all the saints in glory." What else can there be that our spirit longeth for? This seems an empty thing to worldlings, but to the Christian this is heaven summed up in a word—"To be with Christ, which is far better" than all the joys of earth. This is the object, then, of this love-sickness. 3. Ask ye yet again what are the excitements of this sickness? What is it makes the Christian long to be at home with Jesus? There are many things. There are sometimes some very little things that set a Christian longing to be at home. You know the old story of Swiss soldiers, that when they have enlisted into foreign service they never will permit the band to play the "Ranz des Vaches"—the Song of the Cows, because as soon as ever the Swiss hears the Song of the Cows, he thinks of his own dear Alps, and the bells upon the cows necks, and the strange calls of the herd-boys, as they sing to one another from the mountains' peaks; and he grows sick and ill with home-sickness. So if you were banished, if you were taken prisoner or a slave, why, to hear some note of one of old England's songs would set your spirit a-pining for home, and I do confess, when I hear you sing sometimes— "Jerusalem! my happy home! Name ever dear to me; When shall my labors have an end, In joy, and peace, and thee?" it makes me say, "Ye daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him, that I am sick of love." It is the home-song that brings the home-sickness. When we remember what he used to be to us, what sweet visits we have had from him, then we get sick to be always with him, and, best of all, when we are in his presence, when our soul is overjoyed with his delights, when the great deep sea of his love has rolled over the mast-head of our highest thoughts, and the ship of our spirit has gone right down, foundering at sea in the midst of an ocean of delights, ah, then its highest, its deepest thought is, "O that I may always be with him, in him, where he is, that I might behold his glory—the glory which his Father gave him, and which he has given me, that I may be one with him, world without end." I do believe, brethren, that all the bitters and all the sweets make a Christian, when he is in a healthy state, sick after Christ: the sweets make his mouth water for more sweets, and the bitters make him pant for the time when the last dregs of bitterness shall be over. Wearying temptations, as well as rapt enjoyments, all set the spirit on the wing after Jesus. 4. Well now, friends, what is the cure of this love-sickness? Is it a sickness for which there is any specific remedy? There is only one cure that I know of, but there are some palliatives. A man that is sick after Christ, longs to be with him, and pants for the better land, singing as we did just now— "Father, I long, I faint to see The place of thine abode." He must have the desire realized, before the thirst of his fever will be assuaged. There are some palliatives, and I will recommend them to you. Such for example is a strong faith that realizes the day of the Lord and the presence of Christ, as Moses beheld the promised land and the goodly heritage, when he stood on the top of Pisgah. If you do not get heaven when you want it, you may attain to that which is next door to heaven, and this may bear you up for a little season. If you cannot get to behold Christ face to face, it is a blessed make-shift for the time to see him in the Scriptures, and to look at him through the glass of the Word. These are palliatives, but I warn ye, I warn ye of them. I do not mean to keep you from them, use them as much as ever you can, but I warn you from expecting that it will cure that love-sickness. It will give you ease but it will make you more sick still, for he that lives on Christ gets more hungry after Christ. As for a man being satisfied and wanting no more when he gets Christ—why he wants nothing but Christ it is true, in that sense he will never thirst; but he wants more, and more, and more, and more of Christ. To live on Christ is like drinking sea-water, the more ye drink the more thirsty ye grow. There is something very satisfying in Christ's flesh, you will never hunger except for that, but the more you eat of it the more ye may; and he that is the heartiest feaster, and hath eaten the most, hath the best appetite for more. Oh, strange is this, but so it is; that which we would think would remove the lovesickness, and is the best stay to the soul under it, is just that which brings it on more and more. But there is a cure, there is a cure, and you shall have it soon—a black draught, and in it a pearl:—a black draught called Death. Ye shall drink it, but ye shall not know it is bitter, for ye shall swallow it up in victory. There is a pearl, too, in it—melted in it. Jesus died as well as you, and as you drink it, that pearl shall take away all ill effect from the tremendous draught. You shall say, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" When you have once drank that black draught, you are secure against that love-sickness for ever. For where are you? No pilgrimage, no weary flight through cold ether, thou art with him in paradise. Dost thou hear that, soul? Thou art with him in paradise, never to be separated, not for an instant; never to have a wandering thought, not one; never to find thy love waning or growing cold again; never to doubt his love to thee any more; never more to be vexed and tempted by sighing after what thou canst not view. Thou shalt be with him, where he is— "Far from a world of grief and sin, With God eternally shut in." Till then, beloved, let us strive to live near the cross. Those two mountains, Calvary and Zion, stand right opposite one another. The eye of faith can sometimes almost span the interval. And the loving heart, by some deep mystery of which we can offer you no solution, will often have its sweetest rapture of joy in the fellowship of his griefs. So have I found a satisfaction in the wounds of a crucified Jesus, which can only be excelled by the satisfaction I have yet to find in the sparkling eyes of the same Jesus glorified. Yes; the same Jesus! Well spake the angels on Mount Olivet—"This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." This same Jesus! my soul coats on the words; my lips are fond of repeating them. This same Jesus! "If in my soul such joy abounds, While weeping faith explores his wounds, How glorious will those sears appear, When perfect bliss forbids a tear! Think, O my soul, if 'tis so sweet On earth to sit at Jesus' feet, What must it be to wear a crown And sit with him upon his throne?" Would to God you all had this love-sickness! I am afraid many of you have it not. May he give it to you. But oh! if there be a soul here that wants Jesus, he is welcome. If there is one heart here that says, "Give me Christ," you shall have your desire. Trust Jesus Christ, and he is thine; rely upon him, thou art his. God save thee and make thee sick of vanities, sick after verities; pining even unto sickness for Jesus Christ, the beloved of my soul, the sum of all my hope, the sinners only refuge, and the praise of all his saints; to whom be everlasting glory. Amen. The Incomparable Bridegroom and His Bride June 10th, 1886 by C. H. (1834-1892) "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?"— Son 5:9 . This morning, we had the great privilege of preaching the doctrine of substitution, and of directing the minds of God's people to the solid rook of the meritorious sacrifice of Christ whereon all their hopes of heaven must be built. What we have to say to-night is less doctrinal, and more practical; therefore let us guard ourselves at the outset. If we should, with very much earnestness, urge believers to good works, let nobody suppose that, therefore, we imagine that men are saved by works. Let no one for a moment dream that, in urging the believer to bring forth fruit unto righteousness, we are at all teaching that salvation is the work of man. I have no doubt that all of us who know anything of true religion are of the same opinion as that celebrated Scotch divine, old David Dickson, who was asked, when dying, what was the principal subject on which his thoughts were engaged, and he answered, "I am gathering up all my good works, and all my bad works, tying them into one bundle, and throwing them all alike down at the foot of the cross, and am resting alone upon the finished work of Jesus." It is related of that mighty master in Israel, James Durham, that his experience at the last was very much akin to that of his friend Dickson, for he said, "Notwithstanding all my preaching, and all my spiritual experiences, I do not know that I have anything to hang upon excepting this one sentence spoken by Christ, 'Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.'" "Ah!" replied someone who stood by Mr. Durham at the time, "you might well hazard a thousand souls, if you had them, upon the strength of that one precious text." Having said so much by way of caution, I want to address some earnest words to the people of God upon certain practical truths that arise out of our text; and the first thing I have to say is this, that the daughters of Jerusalem recognized in the spouse an exceeding beauty, which dazzled and charmed them, so that they could not help calling her the "fairest among women." This was not her estimate of herself; for she had said, "I am black, but comely." Nor was it the estimate of her enemies; for they had smitten her, and wounded her. But it was the estimate of fair, candid, and impartial onlookers. I. This leads me to remark, first, that OUR SHOULD GIVE WEIGHT TO OUR OF . You will observe that it was in consequence of thinking her the "fairest among women" that they asked the spouse, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved?" They thought that one so fair might well have her choice of a Bridegroom, that one so lovely herself would be likely to have an eye to loveliness in her Husband, and consequently they considered her judgment to be worth some attention, and they put to her the question why her Beloved was more than another beloved. Take it for granted, dear friends, as a truth which your own observation and experience will make every day more and more clear, that your power to spread religion in the world must mainly depend upon your own personal character, of course, in absolute reliance upon the Holy Spirit. I suppose it is the earnest wish of every Christian to win for Christ some new converts, to bring some fresh province under the dominion of the King of kings. I will tell you how this may be accomplished. Your power to achieve this noble purpose must largely depend upon your own personal consistency. It little availeth what I say if I do the reverse. The world will not care about my testimony with the lip, unless there be also a testimony in my daily life for God, for truth, for holiness, for everything that is honest, lovely, pure, and of good report. There is that in a Christian's character which the world, though it may persecute the man himself, learns to value. It is called consistency,—that is, the making of the life stand together, not being one thing in one place and another thing in another, or one thing at one time and quite different on another occasion. It is not consistency to be devout on Sunday and to be dishonest on Monday. It is not consistency to sing the songs of Zion to-day, and to shout the songs of lustful mirth tomorrow. It is not consistency occasionally to wear the yoke of Christ, and yet frequently to make yourself the serf of Satan. But to make your life all of a piece is to make it powerful, and when God the Holy Ghost enables you to do this, then your testimony will tell upon those amongst whom you live. It would be ludicrous, if it were not so sorrowful a thing, to be spoken of even with weeping, that there should be professed Christians who are through inconsistency among the worst enemies of the cross of Christ. I heard, the other day, a story which made me laugh. A poor creature, in a lunatic asylum, had got it into his head that he was some great one, and he addressed a person who was visiting the asylum in the following words:—"I am Sir William Wallace; give me some tobacco!" What a ridiculous contrast between his proud assertion and his poor request! Who but a lunatic would have said such a thing? Yet alas! we know people who say, by their actions, if not in words, "I am a Christian, but I will take advantage of you when I can; I am one of the blood-royal of heaven, my life is hid with Christ in God, and my conversation is in heaven, but—but—I like worldliness, and sensual pleasure, and carnal mirth quite as well as other men!" I say again, that this kind of thing would be superlatively ludicrous if it were not ineffably sorrowful, and it is, anyhow, utterly contemptible. If your life be not all of a piece, the world will soon learn how to estimate your testimony, and will count you to be either a fool or a knave, and perhaps both. But it is not enough to be barely consistent; what the world expects in Christians is real holiness as well as consistency. Holiness is something more than virtue. Virtue is like goodness frozen into ice, hard and cold; but holiness is that same goodness when it is thawed into a clear, running, sparkling stream. Virtue is the best thing that philosophy can produce, but holiness is the true fruit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and of that alone. There must be about us an unworldliness, a something out of the common and ordinary way, or else, mark you, that uncommon gospel, that heavenly gospel, which we hold, will not seem to be bringing forth its legitimate fruit. If you are just barely honest, and no more, if you are barely moral, and no more, it is of no service that you should try to speak of Christ; the world will not reckon you as the fairest among women, and it will not enquire anything about your Well-beloved. But, brethren and sisters, I feel as if, instead of exhorting you thus, I might better turn to confession myself, and ask you to join me in confessing how far short we come of being anything like the fairest among women as to character. We do hope that we have something Christ-like about us; but oh, how little it is! How many imperfections there are! How much is there of the old Adam, and how little of the new creature in Christ Jesus! Archbishop Usher was once asked to write a treatise upon Sanctification; this he promised to do, but six months rolled away, and the good Archbishop had not written a sentence. He said to a friend, "I have not begun the treatise, yet I cannot confess to a breach of my promise, for, to tell you the truth, I have done my best to write upon the subject; but when I came to look into my own heart, I saw so little of sanctification there, and found that so much which I could have written would have been merely by rote as a parrot might have talked, that I had not the face to write it." Yet, if ever there was a man renowned for holiness, it was Archbishop Usher; if ever there was a saintly man who seemed to be one of the seraphic spirits permitted to stray beyond the companionship of his kind among poor earth-worms here, it was Usher; yet this is the confession that he makes concerning himself! Where, then, shall we hide our diminished heads? I am sure we may all say, with good Mr. Fletcher, of Madeley, who was another bright example of seraphic holiness, that what we want is more grace. He had written a pamphlet on some political matter, and Lord North wrote to know what he could give him in return. His answer was, "I want what your lordship cannot give me,—more grace." That is also true of us, we want more grace. It is to be had; and if we had it, and it transformed us into what we should be, oh, what lives of happiness and of holiness we might lead here below, and what mighty workers should we be for our Lord Jesus Christ! How would his dear name be made to sound to the utmost ends of the earth! I fear me it is but a dream; but just conceive that all of you, the members of this church, were made to be truly saintly, saints of the first water, saints who had cast off the sloth of worldliness, and had come out in the full glory of newness of life in Christ Jesus, oh, what a power might this church become in London, and what a power to be felt the wide world over! Let us seek it, let us strive after it, recollecting that it is a truth never to be denied that only in proportion to the sanctity and spirituality of our character will be our influence for good amongst the sons of men. II. Advancing now a step, our second remark will be, that WE SHOULD CHARGE OTHERS CHRIST. "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?" The "fairest among women" was asked why she had so spoken: "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love." By this "charge" is meant, I suppose, that the spouse adjured them, and spoke solemnly to them about her Beloved. Christians, be troublesome to the world! O house of Israel, be like a burdensome stone to the world! You are not sent here to be recognized as honorable citizens of this world, to be petted and well-treated. Even Christ himself, the peaceable One, said, "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?" What I mean is this, we are not to be quiet about our religion. The world says to us, "Hold your tongue about religion, or at least talk about it at fit times; but do not introduce it at all seasons so as to become a pest and a nuisance." I say again, and you know in what sense I mean it, be a nuisance to the world; be such a man that worldlings will be compelled to feel that there is a Christian in their midst. An officer was walking out of the royal presence on one occasion, when he tripped over his sword. The king said to him, "Your sword is rather a nuisance." "Yes," was the officer's reply, "your majesty's enemies have often said so." May you be a nuisance to the world in that sense, troublesome to the enemies of the King of kings! While your conduct should be courteous, and everything that could be desired as between man and man, yet let your testimony for Christ be given without any flinching and without any mincing of the matter. This afternoon, I was reading a sermon by a certain divine, whose subject of discourse was, why the working-classes do not go to a place of worship, and the preacher seems to have made up his mind that, whatever is preached in this Tabernacle, is especially obnoxious to laboring men and women. The reason he gives why the working-classes do not attend places of worship is that we preach such dreadful doctrines. It is very remarkable that places where these truths are preached are crowded, while places where the opposite things are proclaimed are often empty! It is curious, if the doctrine of the gospel is such a very horrible thing that it drives people away, that at the places where it is preached there are more people than can get in, whereas where some of the modern doctrines are declared, you may see more spiders than people! It is a singular circumstance, certainly, yet one for which we can easily account. A Socinian minister was once asked by one who preached Evangelical truth, "If I, who proclaim doctrines which you say are obnoxious to common reason, have my place full, and you, who preach such pretty, reasonable doctrines, can get nobody to hear you, do you not think it is because the people have an idea that what I teach is true, and that what you preach, though it is very pleasant and palatable, is not true, and therefore they do not care to hear it?" It is not by altering our testimony that we are to hope to win an audience, and it is not by hiding the light of the gospel under a bushel that you or I shall discharge our obligations to our Lord. We must speak up for Christ, and so speak up for Him that men will be moved to ask us the question, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?" I have read that Mr. Kilpin, of Exeter, had every pew in the chapel where he preached sketched out on a plan, and the names of all the occupants of the pews written on it, so that he might pray for every one, and, if possible, speak to everyone. Such a plan might not be practicable in so large a building as this, but it is an excellent method; and if we cannot adopt it, let this place be mapped out in your own mind, and let every believer, wherever he sits, consider that there is a little district allotted to him, and let him seek to have a word of courteous Christian conversation about divine things with all who sit near him. I suggest this as a very excellent mode of beginning to "charge "others about Christ; and then in your daily business, in the workshop, at fit times and seasons, at periods when Christian prudence and Christian zeal would give their voice together, introduce Christ, and begin to talk of him, and hold him up as the great cure-all for human diseases, the great staff and support for human weakness. We shall never see as much blessing as we might until the work of the Church becomes far more general than it is at present. There is something which every believer can do for his Lord. He must be able to tell of what he has tasted and handled of the Word of Life, and if he has not tasted and handled it, then he is not a child of God at all. The best teaching in the world is experimental; nothing wins upon men like personal witnessing, not merely teaching the doctrine as we find it in the Book, but as we have felt it in its living power upon our own hearts. When we begin to tell of its effect upon ourselves, it is wonderful what power there is upon others in that testimony. A person talks to me about a certain medicine, how it is compounded, what it looks like, how many drops must be taken at a dose, and so on. Well, I do not care to hear all that, and I soon forget it; but he tells me that for many months he was bed-ridden, he was in sore distress and in great pain, and like to die; and, looking at him as he stands before me in perfect health, I am delighted with the change, and he says that it was that medicine which restored him. If I am a sick man in the same state as he was, I say to him, "Give me the name and address, for I must try that medicine for myself." I believe that the simple witness of converted boys and girls, converted lads and lasses, especially the witness of converted fathers and mothers and friends beloved, the witness that comes of the grey head that is backed up by years of godly living, has a wonderful power for the spread of the gospel, and we cannot expect that God will give us any very large blessing until the whole of us shall be at work for our Lord. We need not all climb up the pulpit stairs, but each one of us can proclaim Christ according to our ability, and according to the circumstances in which he has placed us. When we shall do that, then we may expect to see "greater things than these." Days that shall make us laugh for very joy of heart, and well nigh make us dance like David did before the ark, will come when all the rank and file of the army, and even those who halt upon their crutches, shall march unanimously against the foe. III. Thirdly, it is important for us to MAKE ALL WHO COME IN CONTACT WITH US FEEL THAT CHRIST JESUS IS FIRST AND WITH US. You perceive that the question of the text is not, "What is thy Beloved that he should be equal to others?" It is, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved?" The idols of the heathen are all made to stand in the Pantheon face to face, and there is no quarrelling among them; but as soon as you introduce Christ there, they must all go down, or he will not stay. The principle of the toleration of every form of doctrine—I mean not, of course, civil toleration, which we hold to be always necessary and right, but I mean mental toleration,—the principle of the mental toleration of all forms of doctrine, and all forms and shades of action, is heathenish, for where Christ comes he comes to reign; and when once he enters the soul of a man, it is down, down, down with everything else. There is a text which is often misunderstood. I heard it read thus only last Sunday: "No man can serve two masters." I very much question whether he cannot; I believe he could serve, not only two, but twenty. That is not the meaning of the text; the true reading of it is, "No man can serve two masters." They cannot both be masters; if two of them are equal, then neither of them is really master. It is not possible for the soul to be subject to two master-passions. If a man says, "I love Christ," that is well; but if he says, "I love Christ, and I love money, and I love them both supremely," that man is a liar, for the thing is not possible. There is only one that can be the master-passion; and where Jesus enters the soul, love to him must be the master-passion of the heart. It strikes me that a Christian, living fully up to his privileges, would be such a man as this;—if he had, on one side, the opportunity to enjoy pleasure, and, on the other side, a painful opportunity of honoring Christ, he would prefer to honor Christ rather than to enjoy himself. If, on the one hand, there were gain, even lawfully to be had, and on the other hand, Christ could be honored in a way that would bring no monetary gain, the man would prefer the glorifying of his Master to the obtaining of the advantage in cash which was held out to him. And if it comes to this, that by soft speeches he may get himself into good repute, and that by sternly speaking out and rebuking error he may honor his Master but bring much contempt upon himself, if he be a genuine Christian he will always take the latter course. The first question he will ask will be, "How can I most honor my Lord? How can I best glorify him?" It is clear that Christ is not first in every nominal Christian's heart. No, alas! he is not first, and he is not even second, he is very far down in the scale. Look at them,—good honest tradespeople, perhaps, but from the first dawn of Monday morning to the putting up of the shutters on Saturday night, what is the main business of their life? It is only, "What shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Now, where is Christ in such a case as that? Look at others; with them the question is, "Where shall I invest such-and-such an amount of spare cash? How shall I best lay by such-and-such a sum? What field shall I buy next? What house shall I add to my estate?" As for the Lord Jesus, he is put off with the cheese-parings and the candle-ends; he gets a little now and then dropped into the offering-box, but it is only a mere trifle compared with what he ought to receive. The man's words are nine hundred and ninety-nine for himself, and perhaps not much more than half a one for Christ; almost all his time goes to the world, and not to his Lord; his whole self goes to himself, and not to the Savior to whom he professes to belong. This is not the case with the truly Christ-like man. With him, Christ is first, Christ is last, Christ is midst, Christ is all in all; and when he speaks about anything connected with Christ, his words come with such a solemn earnestness, that men are impressed with what he says, and they turn round to him, and ask, as the daughters of Jerusalem enquired of the spouse, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?" IV. Our last thought is this; if ever, through the grace of God, we should possess such a character, and bear such a testimony as we have been talking about, so that men shall ask us the question of the text, IT WILL BE WELL FOR US TO BE TO ANSWER IT. This is an age in which the world asks many questions, and from some Christians it cannot get an answer. I will say one thing which some of you may not like to hear, perhaps, but I cannot help that. There are some of you who are Baptists; but why? Well, I suppose, because I happen to be one, and you have followed me without carefully studying the teaching of the New Testament upon the question. I fear it is so with some of you, and there are others of you who are Wesleyans, or Independents, or Church people, but the only reason you can give for being so, is that your grandmother, or your mother, happened to be of that denomination. This is an age in which people do not estimate truth as they should do. A good earnest controversy seems to me to be a very healthy thing, because it turns men's attention somewhat more than usual to divine things; but you know how it is, even with many professing Christian people. They think it would be wicked to read a novel; but if it is written upon a religious subject, it is a very proper thing then. There is hardly a weekly newspaper, nowadays, or even a penny magazine, that can live without having a novel in it; and there must be a market for all this rubbish or it would not be supplied so plentifully. Why, sirs, in Puritanic times, men read solid books like John Owen "On the Mortification of Sin"; they studied such works as Richard Gilpin "On Satan's Temptations", or Stephen Charnock on "The Divine Attributes"; but, in these days, people who ought to read these solid books, so as to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in them, are often wasting their time over poor stuff which only addles the brain, and does the soul no good. I would to God that we could again see a race of sturdy believers, who would hold to nothing but what they had tested by the Word of God; who would receive nothing merely because it was taught by their minister, or by their parents, or by any human authority, but who would accept with unquestioning faith everything that is revealed in the Inspired Book. Our motto still should be, "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." We want to breed again—and oh, may God give us grace to do so!—a race of men who shall be rooted and grounded in the faith, and who, when they are asked for a reason for the hope that is in them, shall be able to give it, not with fear and trembling and hesitation, but with holy boldness and determination, because they have tested and tried the matter for themselves. See how the spouse does; she does not pause a minute before she gives her reply. She is asked, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved?" and she has the answer, as we say, at her fingers' ends, and why was this? Why, because she had it in her heart. So she says, "My Beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand." She does not say, "Stop a bit, I must read up on that question; I must get myself well-instructed upon it," but it is such a vital point, had one so dear to her, as it touches the person of her Lord, that she answers at once, "Is my Beloved better than any other beloved? Certainly he is, and here are the reasons." She puts them together one after another without a pause, so that the daughters of Jerusalem must have been convinced; and I commend her example to you also, my beloved in Christ Jesus, Do study the Word, that your faith may not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I beseech you, if I have taught you anything that is not revealed in the Scriptures, or if you have received anything only as by my authority, give it up until you have tested and tried it by the Word of the Lord. I am not afraid what the result will be, for if in anything I have erred, I pray the Lord to teach me and also to teach you, so that we may grow together in the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of the faith. Do let us all seek to be taught of God; and then, with a holy life added to this divine instruction, and a clear testimony for Jesus Christ constantly borne by us, our witnessing must tell upon the age in which we live. Oh, that the Lord would send us times of true revival once again! Run your finger down the page of history till you come to the Reformation; what was there in Luther, in Calvin, in Zwingle, that they should have been able to shake the world any more than there is in men who are living nowadays? Nothing but this, that they believed what they did believe, and they spoke with an awful earnestness, like men who meant what they said, and straightway there arose a noble race of men, men who felt the power of faith, and lived it out, and the world was made to feel that "there were giants in those days." Then, again, in later times, when the Church had fallen into a fatal slumber, there came the age of Whitefield and Wesley. What was the power of the early Methodists? Why, simply the power of true sincerity combined with holiness! What if I say that it was the power of intruding religion upon men, of forcing men to hear God's voice, of compelling a sleeping world to wake out of its slumbers? As I sat, last week, in the hall of the Free Church Assembly in Edinburgh, just beneath the Castle, I started in my seat, I thought the whole hall was going to fall, for at one o'clock the gun on the Castle was fired from Greenwich by electricity. It startled every one of us, and I noticed that nearly everybody took out his watch to see whether it was right by the gun. I thought to myself, "That is just what the Christian Church ought to do. It ought, at the proper time, to give a loud, clear, thundering testimony for God and for truth, so that every man might examine his own conscience, and get himself put right where he is wrong." Our testimony for Christ ought not to be like the ticking of an ordinary clock, or as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, but a mighty booming noise that commands and that demands a hearing. Let our soul be but linked with heaven, let the Spirit of the Lord flash the message along the wires, and our life may be just as accurate and just as startling as that time-gun at Edinburgh. So, when men ask us, "What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?" we shall have an answer ready for them, which may God bless to them, for Christ's sake! Amen. Two Sermons: The Best Beloved and Altogether Lovely The Best Beloved by C. H. (1834-1892) "Yea, he is altogether lovely."— Son 5:16 . No words can ever express the gratitude we owe to Him who loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins: the love of Jesus is unutterably precious and worthy of daily praise. No songs can ever fitly celebrate the triumphs of that salvation which he wrought singlehanded on our behalf: the work of Jesus is glorious beyond compare, and all the harps of angels fall short of its worthy honour. Yet I do believe, and my heart prompts me to say so, that the highest praise of every ransomed soul and of the entire Christian church should be offered to the blessed person of Jesus Christ, our adorable Lord. The love of his heart is excelled by the heart which gave forth that love, and the wonders of his hand are outdone by the hand itself, which wrought those godlike miracles of grace. We ought to bless him for what he has done for us as Mediator in the place of humble service under the law, and for what he suffered for us as Substitute on the altar of sacrifice from before the foundation of the world; and for what he is doing for us as Advocate in the place of highest honour at the right hand of the Majesty on high: but still the best thing about Christ is Christ himself. We prize his, but we worship him. His gifts are valued, but he himself is adored. While we contemplate, with mingled feelings of awe, admiration, and thankfulness, his atonement, his resurrection, his glory in heaven, and his second coming, still it is Christ himself, stupendous in his dignity as the Son of God, and superbly beautiful as the Son of man, who sheds an incomparable charm on all those wonderful achievements, wherein his might and his merit, his goodness and his grace appear so conspicuous. For him let our choicest spices be reserved, and to him let our sweetest anthems be raised. Our choicest ointment must be poured upon his head, and for his own self alone our most costly alabaster boxes must be broken. "He is altogether lovely." Not only is his teaching attractive, his doctrine persuasive, his life irreproachable, his character enchanting, and his work a self-denying labour for the common good of all his people, but he himself is altogether lovely. I suppose at first we shall always begin to love him because he first loved us, and even to the last his love to us will always be the strongest motive of our affection towards him; still there ought to be added to this another reason less connected with ourselves, and more entirely arising out of his own superlative excellence; we ought to love him because he is lovely and deserves to be loved. The time should come, and with some of us it has come, when we can heartily say "we love him because we cannot help it, for his all-conquering loveliness has quite ravished our hearts." Surely it is but an unripe fruit to love him merely for the benefits which we have received at his hand. It is a fruit of grace, but it is not of the ripest flavour; at least, there are other fruits, both new and old, which we have laid up for thee, O our beloved, and some of them have a daintier taste. There is a sweet and mellow fruit which can only be brought forth by the summer sun of fellowship—love because of the Redeemer's intrinsic goodness and personal sweetness. Oh that we might love our Lord for his own sake, love him because he is so supremely beautiful that a glimpse of him has won our hearts, and made him dearer to our eyes than light. Oh that all true and faithful disciples of our beloved Lord would press forward towards that state of affection, and never rest till they reach it! If any of you have not reached it, you need not therefore doubt your own safety, for whatever the reason why you love Jesus, if you love him at all, it is a sure pledge and token that he loves you, and that you are saved in him with an everlasting salvation. Still covet earnestly the best gifts, and rise to the highest degree of devotion,. Love as the purest of the saints have loved; love as John the apostle loved, for still your Lord exceeds all the loving homage you can pay to him. Love his person, love himself; for he is better than all that he has done or given; and as from himself all blessings flow, so back to himself should all love return. Our text tells us that Christ is altogether lovely. What a wealth of thought and feeling is contained in that exclamation! I am embarrassed to know how to preach on such a subject, and half inclined to wish it had not been laid so much upon my heart. What, I pray you, what is loveliness? To discern it is one thing, but it is quite another thing to describe it. There is not one amongst us but knows how to appreciate beauty, and to be enamoured of its attractions, but how many here could tell us what it is? Stand up, my brother, and define it. Perhaps while you were sitting down you thought you could easily tell the tale, but now you are on your feet you find that it is not quite so easy to clothe in words the thoughts which floated through your brain. What is beauty? Cold-blooded word-mongers answer, fitness. And certainly there is fitness in all loveliness. But do not tell me that beauty is mere fitness, for I have seen a world of fitness in this world which, nevertheless, seemed to me to be inexpressibly ugly and unlovable. A wise man tells me that beauty is proportion; but neither is this a full description by many a league. No doubt it is desirable that the features should be well balanced; the eyes should be fitly set, no one feature should be exaggerated, and none should be dwarfed. "In nature what affects our hearts, Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all." Harmony is beauty. Yet I have seen the chiselled marble, fashioned with skilful art into a well-nigh perfect form, which did not, could not, impress me with a sense of loveliness. There stands in one of the halls of the Vatican a statue of Antinous. Every feature in that statue is perfect in itself, and in complete harmony with all the rest. You could not find the slightest fault with eye or nose or mouth. It is indeed as much the ideal of male beauty as the Venus is of female charms, yet no one could ever have been enchanted with the statue, or have felt affection to the form which it represents. There is no expression whatever in the features. Everything is so adjusted and proportioned that you want a divergence to relieve you. The materialism is so carefully measured out that there needs a stir, a break in the harmony to give at least some semblance of a soul. Beauty, then, consists not in mere harmony, nor in balancing the features. Loveliness surely is attractiveness. Yes, but that is another way of saying you do not know what it is. It is a something that attracts you, and constrains you to exclaim, "Nought under heaven so strongly doth allure." We feel its power, we become its slaves; but we cannot write with pen of cold steel, nor could we write even with a pen of lightning, a description of what it is. How, then, can I—enamoured, entranced, enraptured as I am with him whom my soul loveth—how can I speak of him? He is altogether lovely? Where shall I find words, terms, expressions that shall fitly set him forth? Unless the Eternal Spirit shall upraise me out of myself I must for ever be incapable of setting forth the Well-beloved. Besides, were I baffled by nothing else, there is this, that the beauty of Christ is mysterious. It surpasses all the comeliness of human form. He may have had great beauty according to the flesh. That I cannot tell, but I should imagine that such a perfect soul as his must have inhabited a perfectly molded body. Never yet did you or I gaze with satisfaction upon the work of any painter who has tried to picture our Lord Jesus Christ. We have not blamed the great masters, but we have felt that the effort surpassed their powers. How could they photograph the sun? The loftiest conceptions of great artists in this case fall far short of the mark. When the brightness of the Father's glory is the subject the canvas glows in vain. Art sits at her easel and produces diligently many a draught of the sacred features; but they are all failures, and they must be. Who shall ever depict Immanuel, God-with-us? I suppose that, by-and-by, when our Lord had entered upon his active life, and encountered its struggles, his youthful beauty was marred with lines of sadness and sorrow. Still his courage so overshadowed his cares, the mercy he showed so surpassed the misery he shared, and the grace he dispensed so exceeded the griefs that he carried, that a halo of real glory must ever have shone around his brow. His countenance must still have been lovely even when surrounded with the clouds of care and grief. How can we describe even the marred visage? It is a great mystery, but a sure fact, that in our Lord's marred countenance his beauty is best seen. Anguish gave him a loveliness which else he had not reached. His passion put the finishing touch upon his unrivalled loveliness. But, brethren, I am not about to speak of Christ's loveliness after the flesh, for now after the flesh know we him no more. It is his moral and spiritual beauty, of which the spouse in the song most sweetly says, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." The loveliness which the eye dotes on is mere varnish when compared with that which dwells in virtue and holiness; the worm will devour the loveliness of skin and flesh, but a lovely character will endure for ever. I. THIS IS RARE PRAISE. Let that be our first head. This is rare praise. What if I say it is unique? For of no other being could it be said, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." It means, first, that all that is in him is lovely, perfectly lovely. There is no point in our Lord Jesus that you could improve. To paint the rose were to spoil its ruddy hue. To tint the lily, for he is lily as well as rose, were to mar its whiteness. Each virtue in our Lord is there in a state of absolute perfection: it could not be more fully developed. If you were able to conceive of each virtue at its ripest stage it would be found in him. In the matter of transparent ingenuousness and sterling honesty, did ever man speak or act so truthfully as he? Ask, on the other hand, for sympathizing tenderness and love, was ever any so gentle as Jesus? Do you want reverence to God? how he bows before the Father. Do you want boldness before men? how he beards the Pharisees. You could not better anything which you find in Jesus. Wherever you shall cast your eye it may rest with satisfaction, for the best of the best of the best is to be seen in him. He is altogether lovely at every separate point, so that the spouse, when she began with his head, descended to his feet, and then lifting her eyes upward again upon a return voyage of delight, she looked into his countenance and summed up all that she had seen in this one sentence, "He is altogether lovely." This is rare praise. And he is all that is lovely. In each one of his people you will find something that is lovely,—in one there is faith, in another abounding love; in one tenderness, in another courage, but you do not find all good things in any one saint—at least not all of them in full perfection; but you find all virtues in Jesus, and each one of them at its best. If you would take the best quality of one saint, and the best quality of another—yea, the best out of each and all the myriads of his people, you would find no grace or goodness among them all which Jesus does not possess in the fullest degree and in the highest perfection. He combines all the virtues, and gives them all a sweetness over and beyond themselves. In flowers you have a separate beauty belonging to each; no one flower is just like another, but each one blushes with its own loveliness: but in our Lord these separate and distinct beauties are found united in one. Christ is the posy in which all the beauties of the garden of perfection are bound up. Each gem has its own radiance: the diamond is not like the ruby, nor the ruby like the emerald; but Christ is that ring in which you have sapphire, ruby, diamond, emerald, set in choice order, so that each one heightens the other's brilliance. Look not for anything lovely out of Jesus, for he has all the loveliness. All perfections are in him making up one consummate perfection; and all the loveliness which is to be seen elsewhere is but a reflection of his own unrivalled charms. In Jesus Christ—this, moreover, is rare praise again— there is nothing that is unlovely. You have a friend whom you greatly admire and fondly esteem, of whom, nevertheless, I doubt not you have often said to yourself in undertone, "I wish I could take away a little of the rough edge of his manners here and there." You never thought that of Christ. You have observed of one man that he is so bold as to be sometimes rude; and of another that he is so bland and amiable that he is apt to be effeminate. You have said, "That sweetness of his is exceedingly good, but I wish that it were qualified with sterner virtues." But there is nothing to tone down or alter in our divine Lord. He is altogether lovely. Have you not sometimes in describing a friend been obliged to forget, or omit, some rather prominent characteristic when you wished to make a favourable impression? You have had to paint him as the artist once painted Oliver Cromwell; the great wart over the eyebrow was purposely left out of the portrait. Cromwell, you know, said, "Paint me as I am, or not at all." We have, however, often felt that it was kind to leave out the warts when we were talking of those we esteemed, and to whom we would pay a graceful tribute. But there is nothing to leave out in Christ, nothing to hold back, or to guard, or to extenuate. In him is nothing redundant, nothing overgrown. He is altogether lovely. You never need put the finger over the scar in his case, as Apelles did when he painted his hero. No; tell it all out: reveal the details of his private life and secret thoughts, they need no concealment. Lay bare the very heart of Christ, for that is the essence of love and loveliness. Speak of his death-wounds, for in his scars there is more beauty than in the uninjured comeliness of another: and even when he lies dead in the tomb he is more comely than the immortal angels of God at their best estate. Nothing about our Lord needs to be concealed; even his cross at which his enemies stumble, is to be daily proclaimed, and it will be seen to be one of his choicest beauties. Frequently, too, in commending a friend whom you highly appreciated, you have been prone to ask for consideration of his position, and to make excuse for blemishes which you would fain persuade us are less actual than apparent. You have remarked how admirable he acts considering his surroundings. Conscious that someone would hint at an imperfection, you have anticipated the current of conversation by alluding to the circumstances which rendered it so hard for your friend to act commendably. You have felt the need of showing that others influenced him, or that infirmity restrained him. Did you ever feel inclined to apologize for Christ? Did he not always stand unbending beneath life's pressure, upright and unmoved amidst the storms and tempests of an evil world? The vilest calumnies have been uttered against him, in the age just past which produced creatures similar to Thomas Paine, but they never required an answer; and as for the more refined attacks of our modern skepticism, they are for the most part unworthy even of contempt. They fall beneath the glance of truth, withered by the glance of the eye of honesty. We never feel concerned to vindicate the character of Jesus; we know it to be safe against all comers. No man has been able to conjure up an accusation against Jesus. They seek false witnesses, but their testimony agrees not together. The sharp arrows of slander fall blunted from the shield of his perfectness. Oh, no; he is altogether lovely in this sense—that there is nothing whatever in him that is not lovely. You may look, and look, and look again, but there is nothing in him that will not bear scrutiny world without end. Taking the lord Jesus Christ as a whole—this is what our text intends to tell us—he is inexpressibly lovely— altogether lovely. The words are packed as tightly as they can be, but the meaning is greater than the words. Some translate the passage "He is all desires," and it is a good translation too, and contains a grand truth. Christ is so lovely that all you can desire of loveliness is in him; and even if you were to sit down and task your imagination and burden your understanding to contrive, to invent, to fashion the ideal of something that should be inimitable—ay (to utter a paradox) if you could labour to conceive something which should be inconceivably lovely, yet still you would not reach to the perfection of Christ Jesus. He is above, not only all we think, but all we dream of. Do you all believe this? Dear hearers, do you think of Jesus in this fashion? We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen. But no man among you will receive our witness until he can say, "I also have seen him, and having seen him, I set to my seal that he is altogether lovely." II. And now, secondly, as this is rare praise, so likewise IT IS PRAISE. You may say of Christ whenever you look at him, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." He always was so. As God over all, he is blessed for ever, Amen. When in addition to his godhead, he assumed our mortal clay, was he not inimitably lovely then? The babe in Bethlehem was the most beautiful sight that ever the world beheld. No fairer flower ever bloomed in the garden of creation than the mind of that youth of Nazareth gradually unfolding, as he "grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him." All the while he lived on earth, what moral perfections, what noble qualities, what spiritual charms were about his sacred person! His life among men is a succession of charming pictures. And he was lovely in his bitter passion, when as the thick darkness overshadowed his soul he prayed, in an agony of desire, "Not my will, but thine, be done." The bloody sweat did not disfigure, but adorn him. And oh, was he not lovely when he died? Without resentment he interceded for his murderers. His patience, his self-possession, his piety, as "the faithful martyr," have fixed as the meridian of time the hour when he said, "It is finished," and "bowed his head," and "cried with a loud voice, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." He is lovely in his resurrection from the dead; beyond description lovely. Not a word of accusation did he utter against his cruel persecutors, though he had risen clothed with all power in heaven and in earth. With such tender sympathy did he make himself known to his sorrowing disciples, that despite the waywardness of their unbelief their hearts' instinct told them it was the same Jesus." He is altogether lovely. He will be lovely when he comes with solemn pomp, and sound of trumpet, and escort of mighty angels, and brings all his saints who have departed with him, and calls up those that are alive and remain on the earth till his advent, to meet him in the air. Oh, how lovely he will appear to the two throngs who will presently join in one company! How admirable will his appearance be! How eyes, ears, hearts and voices will greet him! With what unanimity the host redeemed by blood will account their highest acclamations as a trivial tribute to his honour and glory! "He is altogether lovely." Yea, and he shall be lovely for ever and ever when your eyes and mine shall eternally find their heaven in beholding him. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," is always worthy of this word of praise—"altogether lovely." Let us retrace our steps for a minute. The more we study the four gospels, the more charmed we are with the gospel; for as a modern author has well said, "The gospels, like the gospel, are most divine because they are most human." As followers of Jesus, rank yourselves with those men who companied with him all the time that he went in and out among them; and you shall find him lovely in all conditions. Lovely when he talks to a leper, and touches and heals him; lovely by the bedside when he takes the fever-stricken patient by the hand and heals her; lovely by the wayside, when he greets the blind beggar, puts his finger on his eyes and bids him see; lovely when he stands on the sinking vessel and rebukes the waves; lovely when he meets the bier and rekindles the life that had expired; lovely when he visits the mourners, goes with the sisters of Bethany to the new-made grave, and weeps, and groans, and—majestically lovely—bids the dead come forth. Lovely is he when he rides through the streets of Jerusalem upon a colt, the foal of an ass. Oh, had we been there, we would have plucked the palm branches, and we would have taken off our garments to strew the way. Hosannah, lovely Prince of Peace! But he was just as lovely when he came from the garden with his face all besmeared with bloody sweat; just as lovely when they said, "Crucify him, crucify him;" just as lovely, and if possible more so, when down those sacred cheeks there dripped the cursed spittle from the rough soldiers' mouths; ay, and loveliest, to my eyes loveliest of all, when mangled, wounded, fainting, bruised, dying, he said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" uttering a plaintive cry of utmost grief from the felon's gibbet whereon he died. Yea, view him where you will, in any place soever, is he not—I speak to you who know him, and not to those who never saw him with the eye of faith—is he not, in the night and in the day, on the sea and on the land, on earth and in heaven, altogether lovely? He is lovely in all his offices. What an entrancing sight to see the king in his beauty, with his diadem upon his head, as he now sits in yonder world of brightness! How charming to view him as a priest, with the Urim and Thummin, wearing the names of his people bejewelled on his breastplate! And what a vision of simple beauty, to see him as a prophet teaching his people in touching parables of homely interest, of whom they said, "Never man spake like this man"! The very tones of his voice, and the glance of his eyes, made his eloquence so supreme that it enthralled men's hearts. Yes, he is lovely, altogether lovely in any and every character. We know not which best beseems him, the highest or the lowliest positions. Let him be what he may—Lamb or Shepherd, Brother or King, Saviour or Master, Foot-washer or Lord—in every relation he is altogether lovely. Get a view of him, my brethren, from any point and see whether he is not lovely. Do you recollect the first sight you ever had of him? It was on a day when your eyes were red with weeping over sin, and you expected to see the Lord dressed in anger coming forth to destroy you. Oh, it was the happiest sight I ever saw when I beheld my sins rolling into his sepulchre and when looking up I beheld him my substitute bleeding on the tree. Altogether lovely was he that day. Since then providence has given us a varied experience and taken us to different points of view that we might look at Christ, and see him under many aspects. We look at statues from several standpoints if we would criticize them. A great many in London are hideous from all points of view—others are very well if you look at them this way, but if you go over yonder and look from another point the artist appears to have utterly failed. Now, beloved, look at Jesus from any point you like, and he is at his best from each and every corner. You have been in prosperity: God multiplied your children and blessed your basket and your store,—was Jesus lovely then? Assuredly he was the light of your delights. Nothing he had given you vied with himself. He rose in your hearts superior to his own best gifts. But you tell me that you have been very sick, and you have lost one after another of your dear ones; your means have been reduced; you have come down in the world: say, then, is Jesus lovely now? I know that you will reply "Yes, more than ever is Christ delightful in mine eyes." Well, you have had very happy times, and you have been on the mount of hallowed friendship. The other Sunday morning many of us were up there, and thought like Peter that we should like to stay there for ever; and is not Jesus lovely when he is transfigured and we are with him? Yes, but at another time you are down in the depths with Jonah, at the bottom of the sea. Is not Christ lovely then? Yes, even there he hears our prayer out of his holy temple, and brings us again from the deep abyss. We shall soon lie dying. Oh, my brethren, what brave talk God's people have often given us about their Lord when they have been on the edge of the grave! That seems to be a time when the Well-beloved takes the veil off his face altogether and sits by the bedside, and lets his children look into his face, and see him as he is. I warrant you the saints forget the ghastliness of death when their hearts are ravished with the loveliness of Christ. Yes, hitherto, up to this point Jesus has been lovely; and now let us add that he will always be so. You know there are persons whom you account beautiful when you are young, but when you grow older in years, riper in judgment, and more refined in taste, you meet with others who look far more beautiful. Now, what think you of your Lord? Have you met with anyone in fact or in fable more beautiful than he? You thought him charming when you were but a babe in grace. What think you of him now? Taste, you know, grows, and develops with education: an article of virtue which fascinated you years ago has no longer any charms for you because your taste is raised. Has your spiritual taste outgrown your Lord's beauties? Come, brothers, does Christ go down as you learn truth more exactly and acquaint yourself more fully with him? Oh no. You prize him a thousand times more to-day than you did when the first impression of his goodness was formed in your mind. Some things which look very lovely at a distance lose their loveliness when you get near to them: but is it not true (I am sure it is) that the nearer you get to Christ the lovelier he is? Some things are only beautiful in your eyes for their novelty: you admire them when you have seen them once; if you were to see them a dozen times you would not care much about hem. What say you about my Master? Is it not true that the oftener you see him, the more you know him, and the more familiar your intercourse with him, the more he rises in your esteem? I know it is so; and well, therefore, did the spouse say, "He is altogether lovely." Christ is altogether lovely in this respect—that, when men reproach him and rail at him, he is often all the lovelier in his people's eyes. I warrant you Christ has been better known by the burn-side in Scotland by his covenanting people than ever he has been seen under the fretted roof of cathedral architecture. Away there in lonely glens, amid the mosses and the hills, where Covenanters met for fear of Claverhouse and his dragoons, the Lord Jesus has shone forth like the sun in his strength. We have nowadays to be satisfied with his moonlight face, but in persecuting days his children have seen his sun face, and oh! how glad they have been. Hear how the saints sing in prison! Listen to their charming notes, even on the rack, when the glory of his presence fills their souls with heaven on earth, and makes them defy the torments of the flesh. The Lord Jesus is more lovely to the soul that can bear reproach for him than he is to any other. Put the cross on his back if you will, but we love him all the better for that. Nail up his hands, but we love him all the better for that. Now fasten his feet; ay, but our soul melteth with love to him, and she feels new reasons for loving him when she beholds the nails. Now stand ye around the cross, ye worldlings, and mock him if ye will. Taunt and jest, and jeer and jibe—these do but make us love the better the great and glorious one, who "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Beloved, you shall keep on looking at Christ from all these points of view till you get to heaven, and each time you shall be more enamoured of him. When you reach the celestial city and see him face to face, then shall you say, "The half has not been told us," but even here below Christ is altogether lovely to his people. III. I leave that head just to notice, in the third place, that though this praise is rare praise and perpetual praise, yet also IT IS TOTALLY PRAISE. Say ye that he is altogether lovely? It is not enough. It is not a thousandth part enough. No tongue of man, no tongue of angel, can ever set forth his unutterable beauties. "Oh," say you, "but it is a great word, though short; very full of meaning though soon spoken— altogether lovely." I tell you it is a poor word. It is a word of despair. It is a word which the spouse uttered, because she had been trying to describe her Lord and she could not do it, and so she put this down in very desperation: as much as to say, "There, the task is too great for me. I will end it. This is all I can say. 'Yea, he is altogether lovely.'" I am sure John Berridge was right when he said— Living tongues are dumb at best, We must die to speak of Christ. Brethren, the praise of the text is insufficient praise, I know, because it is praise given by one who had never seen him in his glory. It is Old Testament praise this, that he is altogether lovely: praise uttered upon report rather than upon actual view of him. Truly I know not how to bring better, but I shall know one day. Till then I will speak his praise as best I can, though it fall far short of his infinite excellence. Our text is cloth of gold, but it is not fit for our Beloved to put the sole of his foot upon. He deserves better than this, for this is only the praise of a church that had not seen him die, and had not seen him rise, and had not seen him in the splendour at the divine right hand. "Well," say you, "try if you can do better." No, I will not, because if I did praise him better, the style would not last long, for he is coming quickly, and the best thing the best speaker could ever say of him will be put out of date by the majesty of his appearing. His chariot is waiting at his door now, and he may soon come forth from his secret chambers and be among us, and oh! the glory—oh! the glory! Paul, you know, stole a glance through the lattices one day when he was caught up into the third heaven. Somebody said to me, "I wonder Paul did not tell us what he saw." Ay, but what he saw he might not tell, and the words he heard were words which it were not lawful for a man to utter, and yet to live among this evil generation. We shall hear those words ourselves soon, and see those sights not many days hence, so let it stand as it does, "He is altogether lovely." But when you have thus summed up all that our poor tongues can express, you must not say, "Now we have described him." Oh no, sirs, ye have but held a candle to this glorious sun, for he is such an one as thoughts cannot compass, much less language describe. I leave this point with the reflection, that God intends to describe him and set him forth one day. He is waiting patiently, for longsuffering is part of Christ's character; and God is setting forth the longsuffering of Christ in the patient waiting of these eighteen hundred years. But the day shall presently dawn and usher in the everlasting age when Christ shall be better seen, for every eye shall see him, and every tongue confess that he is Lord. The whole earth will one day be sweet with the praise of Jesus. Earth, did I say? This alabaster box of Christ's sweetness has too much fragrance in it for the world to keep it all to itself; the sweetness of our Lord's person will rise above the stars, and perfume worlds unknown. It will fill heaven itself. Eternity shall be occupied with declaring the praises of Jesus. Seraphs shall sing of it; angels shall harp it; the redeemed shall declare it. He is altogether lovely. The cycles of eternity as they revolve shall only confirm the statement of the blood-redeemed that he is altogether lovely. O that the day were come when we shall bow with them and sing with them! Wait a little while and be not weary, and you shall be at home, and then you shall know that I spoke the truth when I said that this was insufficient praise. Earth is too narrow to contain him, heaven is too little to hold him, eternity itself too short for the utterance of all his praises. IV. So I close with this last thought, which may God bless, for practical uses. This praise is VERY . If Christ be altogether lovely it suggests a question. suppose I never saw his loveliness. Suppose that in this house there should be souls that never saw anything in Christ to make them love him. If you were to go to some remote island where beauty consisted in having one eye and a twisted mouth, and a sea-green complexion, you would say, "Those people are strange beings." Such are the people of this world. spiritual beauty is not appreciated by them. This world appreciates the man who makes money, however reckless he may be of the welfare of others while scheming to heap up riches for himself. As for the man who slays his fellow-creatures by thousands, they mount him on a bronze horse, put him on an arch, or they pile up a column, and set him as near heaven as they can. He slew his thousands: he died blood-red: he was an emperor, a tyrant, a conqueror: the world feels his power and pays its homage. As for this Jesus, he only gave his life for men, he was only pure and perfect, the mirror of disinterested love. The vain world cannot see in him a virtue to admire. It is a blind world, a fool world, a world that lieth in the wicked one. Not to discern the beauties of Jesus is an evidence of terrible depravity. Have you, my dear friend, frankly to confess that you were never enamoured of him who was holy, harmless, and undefiled, and went about doing good? Then let this come home to you—that the question is not as to whether Christ is lovely or not, the mistake is here—that you have not a spiritually enlightened eye, a fine moral perception, nor even a well-regulated conscience, or you would see his loveliness at once. You are dark and blind. God help you to feel this. Do you not love Christ? Then let me ask you why you do not? There was never a man yet that knew Christ that could give a reason for not loving him, neither is there such a reason to be discovered. He is altogether lovely. In nothing is he unlovable. Oh I wish that the good Spirit of God would whisper in your heart, and incline you to say, "I will see about this Christ. I will read of him. I will look at the four portraits of him painted by the evangelists, and if he be indeed thus lovely, no doubt he will win my heart as he appears to have won the hearts of others." I pray he may. But do not, I pray you, continue to deny Christ your love. It is all you can give him. It is a poor thing, but he values it. He would sooner have your heart than all the gold in Europe. He would sooner have the heart of a poor servant girl or of a poor humble labourer upon the soil than the queen's diadem. He loveth love. Love is his gem—his jewel. He delights to win it, and if he be indeed altogether lovely, let him have it. You have known people, I dare say, whom you could not help loving. they never had to say to you, "Love me," for you were captivated at once by the very sight of them. In like manner many and many have only received one beam of light from the Holy Spirit, and have thereby seen who Jesus was, and they have at once said of him, "Thou hast ravished my heart with one look of thine eyes," and so it has been that all their life long they have loved their Lord. Now, the praise is suggestive still further. "Is Christ altogether lovely? Then do I love him? As a child of God, do I love him as much as I ought? I do love him. Yes, blessed be his name, I do love him. But what a poor, cold, chill love it is. How few are the sacrifices I make for him. How few are the offerings that I present to him. How little is the fellowship that I maintain with him." Brother, is there a rival in your heart? Do you allow anyone to come in between you and the "altogether lovely." If so, chase out the intruder. Christ must have all your heart, and let me tell you the more we love him the more bliss we shall have. A soul that is altogether given up to the love of Christ lives above care and sorrow. It has care and sorrow, but the love of Christ kills all the bitterness by its inexpressible sweetness. I cannot tell you how near a man may live to heaven, but I am persuaded that a very large proportion of the bliss of heaven may be enjoyed before we come there. There is one conduit pipe through which heavenly joy will flow, and if you draw from it you may have as much as you will. "Abide in me" says Christ; and if you do abide in his love you shall have his joy fulfilled in yourselves that your joy may be full. You will have more capacious vessels in heaven, but even now the little vessel that you have can be filled up to the brim by knowing the inexpressible loveliness of Jesus and surrendering your hearts to it. Oh that I could rise to something better than myself. I often feel like a chick in the egg; I am picking my way out, and I cannot get clear of my prison. Fain would I chip the shell, come forth to freedom, develop wings, and soar heavenward, singing on the road. Would God that were our portion. If anything can help us to get out of the shell, and to begin to rise and sing, it must be a full and clear perception that Jesus is altogether lovely. Come, let us be married to him afresh to-night. Come, believing hearts, yield again to his charms; again surrender yourselves to the supremacy of his affection. Let us have the love of our espousals renewed. As you come to his table bethink you of the lips of Christ, of which the spouse had been speaking before she uttered my text,—"His mouth is most sweet." There are three things about Christ's mouth that are very sweet. The first is his word: you have heart that. The second is his breath. Come, Holy Spirit, make thy people feel that. And the third is his kiss. May every believing soul have that sweet token of his eternal love. Forgive my ramblings. May God bless to all his people the word that has been spoken. May some that never knew my Master ask to know him to-night. Go home and seek him. Read the word to find him. Cry to him in prayer and he will be found of you. He is so lovely that I should not live without loving him; and I shall deeply regret if any one of you shall spend another four-and-twenty hours without having had a sight of his divine face by faith. Amen. ################################################################### Altogether Lovely July 23rd, 1871 by C. H. (1834-1892) "Yea, he is altogether lovely."— Son 5:16 . When the old Puritan minister had delivered his discourse, and dwelt upon firstly, and secondly, and thirdly, and perhaps upon twenty-fifthly, before he sat down he usually gave a comprehensive summary of all that he had spoken. Every one who carefully noted the summary would carry away the essence of the sermon. The summary was always looked upon by the Puritan hearer as one of the most valuable helps to memory, and consequently a most important part of the discourse. In these five words the spouse here gives you her summary. She had delivered a tenfold discourse concerning her Lord; she had described in detail all his various beauties, and when she had surveyed him from head to foot, she gathered up all her commendations in this sentence: "Yea, he is altogether lovely." Remember these words, and know their meaning, and you possess the quintessence of the spouse's portion of the Song of Songs. Now, as in this allegorical song, the bride sums up her witness in these words, so may I say that all the patriarchs, all the prophets, all the apostles, all the confessors, yea, and the entire body of the church have left us no other testimony. They all spoke of Christ, and they all commended him. Whatever the type, or symbol, or obscure oracle, or open word in which they bore witness, that witness all amounted to this: "Yea, He is altogether lovely." Yes, and I will add, that since the canon of inspiration has closed, the testimony of all saints, on earth and in heaven, has continued to confirm the declaration made of old. The verdict of each particular saint and of the whole elect host as a body, still is this, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." From the sighs and the songs which mingle on the dying beds of saints, I hear this note supreme above all others, "He is altogether lovely;" and from the songs unmingled with groans, which perpetually peal forth from immortal tongues before the presence of the Most High, I hear this one master note. "Yea, he is altogether lovely." If the whole church desired to say with the apostle, "Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum," she need not wait for a brief and comprehensive summary, for it lies before her in this golden sentence, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." Looking at my text in this light I felt much humbling of spirit, and I hesitated to preach upon it, for I saith in my heart, "It is high, I cannot attain unto it." These deep texts show us the shortness of our plumb-line; these ocean verses are so exceeding broad that our skiffs are apt to be driven far out of sight of land where our timid spirits tremble to spread the sail. Then I comforted myself by the thought that though I could not comprehend this text in a measure, nor weigh its mountains in scales, or its hills in a balance, yet it was all mine own, by the gift of divine grace, and therefore I need not fear to enter upon the meditation of it. If I cannot grasp the ocean in my span, yet may I bathe therein with sweet content; if I cannot describe the king in his beauty, yet may I gaze upon him, since the old proverb saith, "A beggar may look at a prince." Though I pretend not so to preach from such a heavenly word as that before us, as to spread before you all its marrow and fatness, yet may I gather up a few crumbs which fall from its table. Poor men are glad of crumbs, and crumbs from such a feast are better than loaves from the tables of the world. Better to have a glimpse of Jesus, than to see all the glory of the earth all the days of our life. If we fail on this subject we may do better than if we succeeded upon another; so we will pluck up courage, seek divine help, and draw near to this wondrous text, with our shoes from off our feet like Moses when he saw the bush aglow with God. This verse has been translated in another way: "He is all desires;" and so indeed Jesus is. He was the desire of the ancients, he is the desire of all nations still. To his own people he is their all in all; they are complete in him; they are filled out of his fullness. "All our capacious powers can wish, In him doth richly meet." He is the delight of his servants, and fills their expectations to the full. But we will not dispute about translations, for, after all, with such a text, so full of unutterable spiritual sweetness, every man must be his own translator, and into his own soul must the power of the message come, by the enforcement of the Holy Ghost. Such a test as this is very like the manna which fell in the wilderness, of which the rabbis say it tasted after each man's liking. If the flavour in a man's mouth was very sweetness, the angel's food which fell around the camp was luscious as any dainty he had conceived; whatever he might be, the manna was to him as he was. So shall this text be. To you with low ideas of Christ the words shall but glide over your ears, and be meaningless; but if your spirit be ravished with the precious love of Jesus there shall be songs of angels, and more than that, the voice of God's own Spirit to your soul in this short sentence, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." I am an engraver this morning, and I seek somewhat whereon I may engrave this heavenly line. Shall I take unto me ivory or silver? Shall I borrow crystal or gold? These are too common to bear this unique inscription: I put them all aside. Shall I spell my text in gems, with an emerald, a sapphire, a ruby, a diamond, or a pearl for each single letter? Nay, these are poor perishable things: we put them all away. I want an immortal spirit to be the tablet for my writing; nay, I must lay aside my graving tool, and ask the Spirit of God to take it: I want a heart prepared of the Holy Ghost, upon whose fleshy tablets there shall be written this morning no other sentence than this, and this shall suffice for a right royal motto to adorn it well: "Yea, he is altogether lovely." Spirit of God, find out the prepared heart, and with thy sacred hand write in eternal characters the love of Christ, and all his inimitable perfections. In handling our text this morning we shall note three points of character, and then we shall show three uses to which we may profitably turn it. I. We shall consider THREE POINTS OF which are very noticeable in these words, and the first which suggests itself is this: the words are evidently uttered by one who is under the influence of overwhelming emotion. The words are rather a veil to the heart than a glass through which we see its emotions. The sentence labors to express the inexpressible; it pants to utter the unutterable. The person writing these words evidently feels a great deal more than any language can possibly convey to us. The spouse begins somewhat calmly in her description: "My beloved is white and ruddy." She proceeds with due order, commencing at the head, and proceeding with the divers parts of the person of the Beloved but she warms, she glows, she flames, and at last the heat which had for awhile been repressed is like fire within her bones, and she bursts forth in flaming words. Here is the live coal from off the altar of her heart: "Yea, he is altogether lovely." It is the utterance of a soul that is altogether overcome with admiration, and therefore feels that in attempting to describe the Well-beloved, it has undertaken a task beyond its power. Lost in adoring wonder, the gracious mind desists from description, and cries with rapture, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." It has often been thus with true saints; they have felt the love of Jesus to be overpowering and inebriating. Believers are not always cool and calm in their thoughts towards their Lord: there are seasons with them when they pass into a state of rapture, their hearts burn within them, they are in ecstacy, they mount up with wings as eagles, their souls become like the chariots of Amminadib, they feel what they could not tell, they experience what they could not express though the tongues of men and of angels were perfectly at their command. Favored believers are altogether enraptured with the sight they have of their all-beauteous Lord. It is to be feared that such raptures are not frequent with all Christians, though I should gravely question his saintship, who has never experienced any degree of holy rapture: but there are some saints to whom a state of overwhelming adoration of their Lord has been by no means an unusual thing. Communion with Jesus has not only entranced them now and then, but it has perfumed all their life with holiness; and if it has not caused their faces literally to shine like the face of Moses, it has made the spiritual glory to flash from their countenances, and elevated them among their fellow Christians to be leaders of the host of God, whereat others have admired and wondered. Peradventure, I speak to children of God who know very little of what I mean by the overwhelming emotions created by a sight of our Lord; they have not so seen the Lord as to have felt their souls melting within them while the Beloved spake with them; to such I shall speak with sorrowful sympathy, being, alas! too much like unto them, but my prayer shall go up all the while, "Lord, reveal thyself to us, that we also may be compelled to say, 'Yea, he is altogether lovely.' Show us thy hands and thy side till we exclaim with Thomas, 'My Lord and my God.'" Shall I tell you why it is, my brethren, that many of you but seldom enjoy the exceeding bliss of Jesus' presence? The cause may lie partly in what is, alas! too common among Christians, a great degree of ignorance of the person of the Lord Jesus. Every soul that sees Jesus by faith is saved thereby. If I look to Christ with a bleared eye, that is ever so weak and clouded with tears, and if I only catch a glimpse of him through clouds and mists, yet the sight saves me. But who will remain content with such a poor gleam of his glory as that? Who wishes to see only "through a glass, darkly"? No, let my eyes be cleansed till they become as doves by the rivers of waters, and I can see my Lord as he is seen by his bosom friends, and can sing of those beauties which are the light and crown of heaven itself. If you do but touch the hem of Jesus' garment, you shall be made whole; but will this always satisfy you? Will you not desire to get beyond the hem and beyond the garment, to himself, and to his heart, and there for ever take up your abode? Who desires to be for ever a babe in grace, with a half-awakened dreamy twilight consciousness by the Redeemer? Brethren, be diligent in the school of the cross, therein is enduring wisdom. Study your Savior much. The science of Christ crucified is the most excellent of sciences; and to know him and the power of his resurrection, is to know that which is best worth knowing. Ignorance of Jesus deprives many saints of those divine raptures which carry others out of themselves, therefore let us be among those children of Zion who are taught of the Lord. Next to this you shall find the want of meditation to be a very serious robber of the wealth of renewed hearts. To believe a thing is, as it were, to see the cool crystal sparkling in the cup; but to meditate upon it is to drink thereof. Reading gathers the clusters, contemplation squeezes forth their generous juice. Meditation is of all things the most soul-fattening when combined with prayer. The spouse had meditated much in this chapter, for otherwise she had not been able to speak in detail concerning her Lord. O saintly hearts, imitate ye her example! Think, my brethren, of our Lord Jesus: he is God, the Eternal, the Infinite, the ever blessed; yet he became man for us—man of the substance of his mother, like ourselves. Meditate upon his spotless character; review the sufferings which he endured on Calvary; follow him into the grave, and from the grave to the resurrection, and from the resurrection up the starry way to his triumphant throne. Let your souls dwell upon each of his offices, as prophet, priest, and king; pore over each one of his characters, and every scriptural title; pause and consider every phase of him, and when you have done this, begin again and yet again. It is good to chew the cud by meditation, then shall the sweetness and fatness of divine truth come to your soul, and you shall burst forth with such rapturous expressions as that of the text, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." The most of you are too busy, you have too much to do in the world; but; what is it all about? Scraping together dust, loading yourselves with thick clay. O that you were busy after the true riches, and could step aside awhile to enrich yourselves in solitude, and make your hearts vigorous by feeding upon the person and work of your ever blessed Lord! You miss a heaven below by a too eager pursuit of earth. You cannot know these joyful raptures if meditation be pushed into a corner. Another reason why little of the Lord's beauty is discerned, is the low state of the spiritual life in many a Christian. Many a believer is just alive and no more. Do you not know such starveling souls? May you not be one such yourself! His eyes are not delighted with the beauties of Christ, he is purblind, and cannot see afar off; he walks not with Jesus in the garden of pomegranates, he is too feeble to rise from the couch of weakness; he cannot feed upon Christ, his appetite is gone—sure sign of terrible decline. For him there are no climbings to the top of Amana, no leaping for joy in the temple, no dancing before the ark with David; no, if he be but carried to the feet of Jesus in an ambulance as a sick man borne of four, it is as much as he has yet received. To be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, to have the wings of eagles with which to mount above the clouds of earth, to this many are strangers. But beloved, there are noble spirits and better taught, who know something of the life of heaven even while here below. The Lord strengthen us with grace in our inner man, and then shall we drink deeper draughts of the wines on the lees well refined, and then also our eyes being open, we shall see Jesus more clearly, and bear fuller witness that he is "fairer than the children of men." I am afraid that the visits of Christ to our souls have been disesteemed, and the loss of those visits has not caused us corresponding sorrow. We did not sufficiently delight in the beauty of the Bridegroom when he did come to us; when our hearts were somewhat lifted up with his love we grew cold and idle and then he withdrew his conscious presence; but, alas! we were not grieved, but we wickedly tried to live without him. It is wretched work for a believer to try and live without his Savior. Perhaps, dear brethren, some of you have tried it until at last you have almost succeeded. You were wont to mourn like doves if you had no word from your Master in the morning, and without a love-token before you went to rest you tossed uneasily upon your bed; but now you are carnal and worldly, and careless, and quite content to have it so. Jesus hides his face, the sun is set, and yet it is not night with you. O may God be pleased to arouse you from this lethargy, and make you mourn your sad estate! Even if an affliction should be needful to bring you back from your backsliding it would be a cheap price to pay. Awake, O north wind, with all thy cutting force, if thy bleak breath may but stir the lethargic heart! May the Lord grant us grace so to love Christ that if we have not our fill of him, we may be ready to die with hungering and thirsting after him. May we never be able to find a place to build our nest upon while our wing wanders away from the tree of life. Like the dove of Noah, may we drop into the water and be drowned sooner than find rest for the sole of our foot except upon the ark, Christ Jesus, our Savior. Beloved, if none of these suggestions should hit the mark, and reveal the cause why so little is known of rapturous love to Christ, let me suggest another. Very often professors' hearts are vain and frivolous; they are taken up during the week with their business. This might plead some excuse; but when they have little spaces and intervals these are filled up with very vanity. Now, if the soul has come to look at the mere trifles of this world as all-important, is it any marvel that it should be unable to perceive the exceeding preciousness of Christ Jesus? Who will care for the wheat when he dotes on the chaff? And with this it will often happen that the professor's mind has grown proud as well as vain; he does not remember his natural poverty and meanness, and consequently does not value the riches of Christ Jesus. He has come to think himself an established, experienced Christian; he fancies that he is not like those foolish beginners who are so volatile and so readily led astray; he has acquired the wisdom of years and the stability of experience. O soul, if thou art great, Christ will be little; thou canst never see him on the throne until thou hast been on the dunghill thyself. If thou be anything, so much the less is Christ; for if he be all in all, then there is no room for anything else and if thou be something, thou hast stolen just so much from the glory of thy Lord Jesus. Lie low in the dust, it is the place for thee. "The more thy glories strike my eyes, The humbler I shall lie." The humbler I am in myself, the more shall I be capable of seeing the enchanting beauties of Christ. Let me just say these two or three words. I believe those are the happiest saints who are most overwhelmed with a sense of the greatness, goodness, and preciousness of Christ. I believe these to be the most useful saints, also, and to be in the Christian church as a tower of strength. I pray that you and I, walking with God by faith, may nevertheless often have our festival days, our notable seasons, when he shall specially bless us with the kisses of his love, and we shall drink larger draughts of his love, which is better than wine. Oh! to be carried right away with the divine manifestation of the chief among ten thousand, so that our souls shall cry out in rapture, "Yea, he is altogether lovely." This is one characteristic of the text: may it be transferred to us. 2. A second is this, and very manifest it is upon the surface of the verse—here is undivided affection. "He is altogether lovely." Note that these words have a world of meaning in them, but chiefly they tell us this, that Jesus is to the true saint the only lovely one in the world. "He is altogether lovely;" then there is no loveliness anywhere else. It is as though the spouse felt that Christ had engrossed all the beauty and all the loveworthiness in the entire universe. Who among us will say that she erred? Is not Jesus worthy of all the admiration and love of all intelligent beings? But may we not love our friends and kinsfolk? Ay but in him, and in subservience to him; so, and so only, is it safe to love them. Did not our Lord himself say, "If any man love father or mother more than me, he is not worthy of me"? Yea, and in another place he put it more strongly still, for he said, "Except a man hate father and mother," or love them not at all in comparison with me, "he is not worthy of me." Except these are put on a lower stage than Jesus is we cannot be his disciples. Christ must be monarch in the breast; our dear ones may sit at his footstool, and we may love them for his sake, but he alone must fill the throne of our hearts. I may see excellences in my Christian brethren, but I must not forget that there would be none in them if they were not derived from him; that their loveliness is only a part of his loveliness, for he wrought it in them by his own Spirit. I am to acknowledge that Jesus is the monopoliser of all loveliness, the engrosser of all that is admirable in the entire universe; and I am, therefore, to give him all my love, for "he is altogether lovely." Our text means, again, that in Jesus loveliness of all kinds is to be found. If there be anything that is worthy of the love of an immortal spirit, it is to be seen in abundance in the Lord Jesus. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, all can be found without measure in Christ Jesus. As all the rivers meet in the sea, so all beauties unite in the Redeemer. Take the character of any gracious man, and you shall find a measure of loveliness, but it has its bounds and its mixtures. Peter has many virtues, but he has not a few failings. John, too, excels, but in certain points he is deficient; but herein our Lord transcends all his saints, for all human virtues, all divine, are harmoniously blended in him. He is not this flower or that, but he is the Paradise of perfection. He is not a star here or a constellation there, he is the whole heaven of stars, nay, he is the heaven of heavens; he is all that is fair and lovely condensed in one. When the text says again that Jesus "is altogether lovely," it declares that he is lovely in all views of him. It generally happens that to the noblest building there is an unhappy point of view from which the architecture appears at a disadvantage; the choicest piece of workmanship may not be equally complete in all directions; the best human character is deformed by one flaw, if not with more; but with our Lord all is lovely, regard him as you will. You shall contemplate him from all points, and only find new confirmation of the statement that "he is altogether lovely." As the everlasting God before the world was made, angels loved him and adored; as the babe at Bethlehem or as the man at Bethany; as walking the sea or as nailed to the cross; in his grave, dead, and buried, or on his throne triumphant; rising as forerunner, or descending a second time to judge the world in righteousness; in his shame, despised and spit upon, or in his glory, adored and beloved; with the thorns about his brow and the nails piercing his hands, or with the keys of death and hell swinging at his girdle; view him as you will, and where you will, and when you will, "he is altogether lovely." Under all aspects, and in all offices and in relations, at all times and all seasons, under all circumstances and conditions, anywhere, everywhere, "he is altogether lovely." Nor is he in any degree unlovely; the commendation forbids the idea it he be "altogether lovely," where could you find room for deformity? When Apelles painted Alexander, he laid the monarch's finger on an unsightly scar; but there are no scars to conceal when you pourtray the countenance of Immanuel. We say of our country—and who among us will not say it?—"With all her faults we love her still;" but we love Jesus, and find no strain put upon our heart, for trace of fault he has none. There is no need of apologies for Jesus, no excuses are required for him. But what is that I see upon his shoulder? It is a hard rough cross; and if I follow him I must carry that cross for his sake. Is not that cross unsightly? Oh, no! he is altogether lovely, cross and all. Whatever it may involve to be a Christian, we count even the reproach of Christ to be greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. The world will honor a half Christ, but a whole Christ it will not acknowledge. The bat's-eyed Socinian saith, "I admire the man Christ, but I will not adore Jesus the God." To him the eternal word is but half lovely, if lovely at all. Some will have Christ the exemplar, but they will not accept him as the vicarious sacrifice for sin, the substitute for sinners. Many will have Christ in silver slippers—my lord archbishop's religion—but they would not listen to the gospel from a poor gracious Methodist, or think it worth their while to join the unlettered throng whose devout songs rise from the village green. Alas! how much we see of crosses of gold and ivory, but how little do men love the lowly cross of Jesus! Brethren, we think Jesus "altogether lovely" even in poverty, or when hanging naked on the cross, deserted and condemned. We see unspeakable beauty in Jesus in the grave, all fair with the pallor of death. Jesus bruised as to his heel by the old serpent is yet comely. His love to us makes him evermore "white and ruddy" to our eye. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/spurgeon/ The Church as She Should Be by C. H. (1834-1892) "Thou art beautiful, O my love as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners."— Son 6:4 . There are various estimates of the Christian church. Some think everything of her; some think nothing of her; and probably neither opinion is worth the breath which utters it. Neither Ritualists, who idolise their church, nor sceptics, who vilify all churches, have any such knowledge of the true spiritual church of Jesus Christ as to be entitled to give an opinion. The king's daughter is all glorious within, with a beauty which they are quite unable to appreciate. What is usually the most correct character which is obtainable of a woman? Shall we be guided by the praises of those neighbors who are on good terms with her, or by the scandal of those who make her the subject of ill-natured gossip? No; the most accurate judgment we are likely to get is that of her husband. Solomon saith in the Proverbs concerning the virtuous woman, "Her husband also riseth up, and he praiseth her." Of that fairest among women, the church of Christ, the same observation may be made. It is to her of small consequence to be judged of man's judgment, but it is her honor and joy to stand well in the love and esteem of her royal spouse, the Prince Emmanuel. Though the words before us are allegorical, and the whole song is crowded with metaphor and parable, yet the teaching is plain enough in this instance; it is evident that the Divine Bridegroom gives his bride a high place in his heart, and to him, whatever she may be to others, she is fair, lovely, comely, beautiful, and in the eyes of his love without a spot. Moreover, even to him there is not only a beauty of a soft and gentle kind in her, but a majesty, a dignity in her holiness, in her earnestness, in her consecration, which makes even him say of her that she is "terrible as an army with banners," "awful as a bannered army." She is every inch a queen: her aspect in the sight of her beloved is majestic. Take, then, the words of our text as an encomium upon Christ's church, pronounced by him who knows her best, and is best able to judge concerning her, and you learn that to his discerning eye she is not weak, dishonorable, and despicable, but bears herself as one of highest rank, consciously, joyously strong in her Lord's strength. On this occasion let us note, first of all, WHY IT IS THAT THE CHURCH OF GOD IS SAID TO BE AN ARMY WITH BANNERS. That she is an army is true enough, for the church is one, but many; and consists of men who march in order under a common leader, with one design in view and that design a conflict and a victory. She is the church militant here below, and both in suffering and in service she is made to prove that she is in an enemy's country. She is contending for the truth against error, for the light against darkness: till the day break and the shadows flee away, she must maintain her sentinels and kindle her watch fires; for all around her there is cause to guard against the enemy, and to descend the royal treasure of gospel truth against its deadly foes. But why an army with banners? Is not this, first of all, for distinction? How shall we know to which king an army belongs unless we can see the royal standard? In times of war the nationality of troops is often declared by their distinguishing regimentals. The grey coats of the Russians were well known in the Crimea; the white livery of the Austrians was a constant eyesore in bygone days to the natives of Lombardy. No one mistook the Black Brunswickers for French Guards, or our own Hussars for Garibaldians. Quite as effectively armies have been distinguished by the banners which they carried. As the old knights of old were recognised by their plume and helmet, and escutcheon, so an army is known by its standard and the national colors. The tricolor of the French readily marked their troops as they fled before the terrible black and white of the German army. The church of Christ displays its banners for distinction's sake. It desires not to be associated with other armies, or to be mistaken for them, for it is not of this world, and its weapons and its warfare are far other than those of the nations. God forbid that followers of Jesus should be mistaken for political partisans or ambitious adventurers. The church unfurls her ensign to the breeze that all may know whose she is and whom she serves. This is of the utmost importance at this present, when crafty men are endeavoring to palm off their inventions. Every Christian church should know what it believes, and publicly avow what it maintains. It is our duty to make a clear and distinct declaration of our principles, that our members may know to what intent they have come together, and that the world also may know what we mean. Far be it from us to join with the Broad Church cry, and furl the banners upon which our distinctive colors are displaced. We hear on all sides great outcries against creeds. Are these clamours justifiable? It seems to me that when properly analysed most of the protests are not against creeds, but against truth, for every man who believes anything must have a creed, whether he write it down and print it or no; or if there be a man who believes nothing, or anything, or everything by turns, he is not a fit man to be set up as a model. Attacks are often made against creeds because they are a short, handy form by which the Christian mind gives expression to its belief, and those who hate creeds do so because they find them to be weapons as inconvenient, as bayonets in the hands of British soldiers have been to our enemies. They are weapons so destructive to theology that it protests against them. For this reason let us be slow to part with them. Let us day hold of God's truth with iron grip, and never let it go. After all, there is a Protestantism still worth contending for; there is a Calvinism still worth proclaiming, and a gospel worth dying for. There is a Christianity distinctive and distinguished from Ritualism, Rationalism, and Legalism, and let us make it known that we believe in it. Up with your banners, soldiers of the cross! This is not the time to be frightened by the cries against conscientious convictions, which are nowadays nicknamed sectarianism and bigotry. Believe in your hearts what you profess to believe; proclaim openly and zealously what you know to be the truth. Be not ashamed to say such-and-such things are true, and let men draw the inference that the opposite is false. Whatever the doctrines of the gospel may be to the rest of mankind, let them be your glory and boast. Display your banners, and let those banners be such as the church of old carried. Unfurl the old primitive standard, the all-victorious standard of the cross of Christ. In very deed and truth— in hoc signo vinces—the atonement is the conquering truth. Let others believe as they may, or deny as they will, for you the truth as it is in Jesus is the one thing that has won your heart and made you a soldier of the cross. Banners were carried, not merely for distinctiveness, but also to serve the purposes of discipline. Hence an army with banners had one banner as a central standard, and then each regiment or battalion displayed its own particular flag. The hosts of God, which so gloriously marched through the wilderness, had their central standard. I suppose it was the very pole upon which Moses lifted up the brazen serpent (at any rate, our brazen serpent is the central ensign of the church); and then, besides that, each tribe of the twelve had its own particular banners, and with these uplifted in the front, the tribes marched in order, so that there was no confusion on the march, and in time of battle there was no difficulty in marshalling the armed men. It was believed by the later Jews that "the standard of the camp of Judah represented a lion; that of Reuben, a man; that of Joseph, an ox; and that of Dan, an eagle. The Targumists, however, believe that the banners were distinguished by their colors, the color for each tribe being analogous to that of the precious stone for that tribe, in the breastplate of the high priest; and that the great standard of each of the four camps combined the three colors of the tribes which composed it." So, brethren, in the church of God there must be discipline—the discipline not only of admission and of dismission in receiving the converts and rejecting the hypocrites, but the discipline of marshalling the troops to the service of Christ in the holy war in which we are engaged. Every soldier should have his orders, every officer his troop, every troop its fixed place in the army, and the whole army a regularity such as is prescribed in the rule, "Let all things be done decently and in order." As in the ranks each man has his place, and each rank has its particular phase in the battalion, so in every rightly constituted church each may, each woman, will have, for himself or herself, his or her own particular form of service, and each form of service will link in with every other, and the whole combined will constitute a force which cannot be broken. A church is not a load of bricks, remember: it is a house builded together. A church is not a bundle of cuttings in the gardener's hand: it is a vine, of which we are the branches. The true church is an organised whole; and life, true spiritual life, wherever it is paramount in the church, without rules and rubrics, is quite sure to create order and arrangement. Order without life reminds us of the rows of graves in a cemetery, all numbered and entered in the register: order with life reminds us of the long lines of fruit trees in Italy, festooned with fruitful vines. Sunday-school teachers, bear ye the banner of the folded lamb; sick visitors, follow the ensign of the open hand; preachers, rally to the token of the uplifted brazen serpent; and all of you, according to your sacred calling, gather to the name of Jesus, armed for the war. An army with banners may be also taken to represent activity. When an army holds up its colors the fight is over. Little is being done in military, circles when the banners are put away; the troops are on furlough, or are resting in barracks. An army with banners is exercising, or marching, or fighting; probably it is in the middle of a campaign, it is marshalled for offense and defense, and there will be rough work before long. It is to be feared that some churches have hung up their flags to rot in state, or have encased them in dull propriety. They do not fool; to do great things, or to see great things. They do not expect many conversions; if many did happen, they would be alarmed and suspicious. They do not expect their pastor's ministry to be with power; and if it were attended with manifest effect they would be greatly disturbed, and perhaps would complain that he created too much excitement. The worst of it is, that do-nothing churches are usually very jealous lest any should encroach on their domain. Our churches sometime ago appeared to imagine that a whole district of this teeming city belonged to them to cultivate or neglect, as their monopolising decree might be. If anybody attempted to raise a new interest, or even to build a preaching station, within half a mile of them, they resented it as a most pernicious poachings upon their manor. They did nothing themselves, and were very much afraid lest anybody should supplant them. Like the lawyers of old, who took away the key of knowledge, they entered not in themselves, and them that were entering in they hindered. That day, it is to be hoped, has gone once for all; yet too much of the old spirit lingers in certain quarters. It is high time that each church should feel that if it does not work, the sole reason for its existence is gone. The reason for a church being a church dies its mutual edification and in the conversion of sinners; and if these two ends are not really answered by a church, it is a mere name, a hindrance, an evil, a nuisance; like the salt which has lost its savor, it is neither fit for the land nor yet for the dunghill. May we all in our church fellowship be active in the energy of the Spirit of God. May none of us be dead members of the living body, mere impediments to the royal host, baggage to be dragged rather than warriors pushing on the war. May we, every one of us, be soldiers filled with vigor to the fullness of our manhood, by the eternal power of the Holy Spirit; and may we be resolved that any portion of the church which does not uplift its banner of service shall not long number us among its adherents. Be it ours to determine that whether others will or will not serve God and extend the kingdom of his dear Son, we will, in his name and strength, contend even to the death. Unsheath our swords, ye soldiers of the cross; arise from your slumbers, ye careless ones, gird on your swords and prepare for the war. The Lord has redeemed you by his blood, not that you might sleep, but that you might fight for the glory of his name. Does not the description, "an army with banners," imply a degree of confidence? It is not an army retiring from the foe, and willing enough to hide its colors to complete its escape. An army that is afraid to venture out into the open, keeps its banners out of the gleam of the sun. Banners uplifted are the sign of a fearlessness which rather courts than declines the conflict. Ho! warriors of the cross, unfurl the gospel's ancient standard to the breeze; we will teach the foeman what strength there is in hands and hearts that rally to the Christ of God. Up with the standard, ye brave men at arms; let all eyes see it; and it the foemen glare like lions on it, we "will call upon the Lion of the tribe of Judah to lead the van, and we will follow with his word like a two-edged sword in our hands:— "Stand up! stand up for Jesus! Ye soldiers of the cross! Lift high hits royal banner; It must not suffer loss: From victory unto victory His army shall he lead Till every foe is vanquished And Christ is Lord indeed." We cannot place too much reliance in the gospel; our weakness is that we are so diffident and so apt to look somewhere else for strength. We do not believe in the gospel as to its power over the sons of men as we should believe in it. Too often we preach it with a coward's voice. Have I not heard sermons commencing with abject apologies for the preacher's daring to open his mouth; apologies for his youth, for his assertions, for his venturing to intrude upon men's consciences, and I know not what else? Can God own ambassadors of this cowardly cringing breed, who mistake fear of men for humility! Will our Captain honor such carpet-knights, who apologise for bearing arms? I have heard that of old the ambassadors of Holland, and some other states, when introduced to his celestial majesty, the brother of the son and cousin of the moon, the Emperor of China, were expected to come crawling on their hands and knees up to the throne; but when our ambassadors went to that flowery land, they declined to pay such humiliating homage to his impertinent majesty, and informed him that they would stand upright in his presence, as free men should do, or else they would decline all dealings with him, and in all probability his majesty would hear from a cannon's mouth far less gentle notes than he would care for. Even thus, though we may well humble ourselves as men, yet as ambassadors of God we cannot crouch to the sons of men, to ask them what message would suite them best. It must not, shall not, be that we shall smoothe our tongues and tone our doctrines to the taste of the age. The gospel that we preach, although the worldly wise man despises it, in God's gospel for all that. "Ah," says he, "there is nothing in it: science has overthrown it." "And," says another, "this gospel is but so much platitude; we have heard it over and over again." Ah, sir, and though it be platitude to you, and you decree it to be contemptible, you shall hear it or nothing else from us; "for it is the power of God, and the wisdom of God." In its simplicity lies its majesty and its power. "We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. "God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." We will proclaim it again with confidence; We will bring forth once more the selfsame truth as of old; and as the barley loaf smote the tent of Midian, so that it lay along, so shall the gospel overturn its adversaries. The broken pitcher, and the flaming torches, and the old war cry, "The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon" shall yet fill the foeman with dismay. Let us but be bold for Jesus, and we shall see what his arm can do. The gospel is the voice of the eternal God, and has in it the same power as that which brought the world out of nothing, and which shall raise the dead from their graves at the coming of the Son of Man. The gospel, the word of God, can no more return to him void than can the snow go back to heaven, or the rain-drops climb again the path by which they descended from the clouds. Have faith in God's word, faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost, faith in the reigning Savior, faith in the fulfillment of the everlasting purposes, and you will be full of confidence, and like an army with banners. Once more, an army with banners may signify the constancy and perseverance in holding the truth. We see before us not an army that has lost its banners, that has suffered its colors to be rent away from it, but an army which bears aloft its ancient standard and swears by it still. Let us be very earnest to maintain the faith once delivered to the saints. Let us not give up this doctrine or that, at the dictates of policy or fashion; but whatsoever Jesus saith unto us, let us receive it as the word of life. Great injury may be done to a church ere it knows it, if it shall tolerate error here and there; for false doctrine, like the little leaven, soon leavens the whole lump. If the church be taught of the Spirit to know the voice of the Good Shepherd, a stranger it will not follow; for it knows not the voice of strangers. This is part of the education which Christ gives to his people: "All thy people shall be taught of the Lord." They shall know the truth, and the truth shall make them free. May we, as a church, hold fast the things which we have learned and have been taught of God; and may we be preserved from the philosophies and refinings of these last days. If we give up the things which are verily believed among us we shall lose our pourer, and the enemy alone will be pleased; but if we maintain them, the maintenance of the old faith, by the Spirit of God, shall make us strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Wrap the colors round you, ye standard bearers, in the day of danger, and die sooner than give them up. Life is little compared with God's lovingkindness, and that is the sure heritage of the brave defender of the faith. Thus resolute for truth, the church becomes an army with banners. II. Secondly, the church is said to be . To whom is she terrible? She should be amiable, and she is. May God grant that our church may never be terrible to young converts by moroseness and uncharitableness. Whenever I hear of candidates being alarmed at coming before our elders, or seeing the pastor, or making confession of faith before the church, I wish I could say to them: "Dismiss your fears, beloved ones; we shall be glad to see you, and you will find your intercourse with us a pleasure rather than a trial." So far from wishing to repel you, if you really do love the Savior, we shall be glad enough to welcome you. If we cannot see in you the evidence of a great change, we shall kindly point out to you our fears, and shall be thrice happy to point you to the Savior; but be sure of this, if you have really believed in Jesus, you shall not find the church terrible to you. Harsh judgments are contrary to the spirit of Christ and the nature of the gospel; where they are the rule, the church is despicable rather than terrible. Bigotry and uncharitableness are indications of weakness, not of strength. To what and to whom is the church terrible? I answer, first, in a certain sense she is terrible to all ungodly men. A true church in her holiness and testimony is very terrible to sinners. The ungodly care not a rush about a mock church, nor about sham Christians; but a really earnest Christian makes the ungodly abashed. We have known some who could not use the foul language which they were accustomed to when they were in the presence of godly men and women, though these persons had no authority or position or rank. Even in the most ribald company, when a Christian of known consistency of character has wisely spoken the word of reproof, a solemn abashment comes over the majority of those present; their consciences have borne witness against them, and they have felt how awful goodness is. Not that we are ever to try and impress others with any dread of us; such an attempt would be ridiculed, and end in deserved failure; but the influence which we would describe flows naturally out of a godly light. Majesty of character never lies in affectation of demeanor, but in solidity of virtue. If there be real goodness in us—if we really, fervently, zealously love the right, and hate the evil—the outflow of our life almost without a word will judge the ungodly—and condemn them in their heart of hearts. Holy living is the weightiest condemnation of sin. We have heard of an ungodly son who could not bear to dive in the house where his departed father had in his lifetime so devoutly prayed; every room, and every piece of furniture reproved him for forsaking his father's God. We have read of others who were wont to dread the sight of certain godly men whose holy lives held them more in check than the laws of the land. The bad part of this is that the terror of the ungodly suggests to them an unhallowed retort upon their reprovers, and becomes the root out of which springs persecution. Those whom the ungodly fear because they condemn them by their character, they try to put out of the world if they can, or to bespatter them with slander if they cannot smite them with the hand of cruelty. The martyrdom of saints is the result of the darkness hating the light, because the light makes manifest its evil deeds. There will be always in proportion to the real holiness, earnestness, and Christ likeness of a church something terrible in it to the perverse generation in which it is placed; it will dread it as it does the all-revealing day of judgment. So is there something terrible in a living church to all errorists. Just now two armies have encamped against the host of God, opposed to each other, but confederates against the church of God. Ritualism, with its superstition, its priestcraft, its sacramental efficacy, its hatred of the doctrines of grace; and on the other side Rationalism, with its sneering unbelief and absurd speculations. These, like Herod and Pilate, agree in nothing but in opposition to Christ; they have one common dread, although they may not confess it. They do not dread those platform speeches in which they are so furiously denounced at public meetings, nor those philosophical discussions in which they are overthrown by argument; but they hate, but they fear, and therefore abuse and pretend to despise, the prayerful, zealous, plain simple preaching of the truth as it is in Jesus. This is a weapon against which they cannot stand—the weapon of the odd gospel. In the days of Luther it did marvels; it wrought wonders in the days of Whitfield and Wesley: it has often restored the ark of the Lord to our land, and it will again. It has lost none of its ancient power, and therefore is it the terror of the adversaries of Christ. "Thine aspect's awful majesty Doth strike thy foes with fear; As armies do when banners fly, And martial flags appear. How does thine armor, glitt'ring bright, Their frighted spirits quell! The weapons of thy warlike might Defy the gates of hell." Even to Satan himself the church of God is terrible. He might, he thinks, deal with individuals, but when these individuals strengthen each other by mutual converse and prayer, when they are bound to each other in holy love, and make a temple in which Christ dwells, then is Satan hard put to it. O brethren and sisters, it is not every church that is terrible thus, tent it is a church of God in which there is the life of God, and the love of God; a church in which there is the uplifted banner, the banner of the cross, high-held amid those various banners of truthful doctrine and spiritual grace, of which I have just now spoken. III. We will take a third point; and that is, WHY IS THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS? Why is it terrible because of its banners? The whole passage seems to say that the church is terrible as an army, but that to the fullest degree she owes her terribleness to her banners. "Terrible as an army with banners." I believe the great banner of the Christian church to be the uplifted Savior. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." Around him then we gather. "Unto him shall the gathering of the people be." As the brazen serpent in the midst of the camp in the wilderness, so is the Savior lifted high, our banner. The atoning, sacrifice of Christ is the great central standard of all really regenerate men, and this is the main source of dismay to Israel's foes. But we shall take the thoughts in order. The church herself is terrible, and then terrible because of her banners. Brethren, the army itself is terrible. Why? First, because it consists of elect people. Remember how Haman's wife enquired concerning Mordecai whether he belonged to the seed of the Jews; for if he did, then she foretold that her husband's scheme would prove a failure. "If Mordecai be of the Seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him." Now, the church of God as made up of men and women is nothing more than any other organisation. Look at its exterior, and you see in it few persons of great education and a great many of no education; here and there a wealthy and powerful person, but hundreds who are poor and despised. It does not possess in itself, naturally, the elements of strength, according to ordinary reckoning. Indeed, its own confession is that in itself it is perfect weakness, a flock of sheep among wolves; but here lies its strength, that each of the true members of the church are of the seed royal; they are God's chosen ones, the seed of the woman ordained of old to break the head of Satan and all his serpent seed. They are the weakness of God, but they are stronger than men; he has determined with the things that are not to bring to nought the things that are. As the Canaanites feared the chosen race of Israel because the rumor of them had gone forth among the people, and the terror of Jehovah was upon them; so is it with the hosts of evil. They have dreamed their dreams, as the Midianite did, and valiant men like Gideon can hear them telling it; the barley cake shall fall upon the royal tent of Gideon and smite it till it lies along; the sword of the Lord, and of Gideon, shall rout the foe. The elect shall overcome through the blood of the Lamb, and none shall say them nay. Ye are a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, a chosen generation; and in you the living God will gloriously declare his sovereign grace. The church, again, consists of a praying people. Now prayer is that which links weakness with infinite strength. A people who can pray can never be overcome, because their reserve forces can never be exhausted. Go into battle, my brother; and if you be vanquished with the strength you have, prayer shall call up another legion. Yea, twenty legions of angels, and the foe shall marvel to see undefeated adversaries still holding the field. If ten thousand saints were burned to-morrow, their dying prayers would make the church rise like a phoenix from her ashes. Who, therefore, can stand against a people whose prayers enlist God in their quarrel? "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge." We cry unto the Lord, and he heareth us; he breaketh through the ranks of the foe; he giveth us triumph in the day of battle: therefore, terrible as an army with banners are those who wield the weapon of all-prayer. Again, a true church is based upon eternal truth. I need not quote to you the old Latin proverb which says that truth is mighty and must prevail. Truth is, and truth shall be. It alone is substance, and must outlast the lapse of ages. Falsehoods are soon swollen to their perfection of development, like the bubbles with rainbow hues which children blow, but they are dispersed as easily as they are fashioned; they are children of the hour, while truth is the offspring and heir of eternity. Falsehood dies, pierced through the heart by the arrows of time, but truth, in her impenetrable mail bids defiance to all foes. Men who love the truth are building gold and silver, and precious stones; and though their architecture may progress but slowly, it is built for eternity. Ramparts of truth may often be assailed, but they will never be carried by the foe. Establish a power among men of the most ostentatious and apparently stable kind, but rest assured that if untruth be at the root of it, it must perish, sooner or later; only truth is invincible, eternal, supreme. The fear of the true church and the dread thereof falls upon the enemy, because they have wit enough left to know that truth has an abiding and indestructible power. I was very much amused, the other day, to read a criticism by an eminent infidel, whose name would be well known if I were to mention it, in which he speaks very highly of the exceeding great skill and wisdom, and common sense, always exhibited in the arrangements of the Roman Catholic Church in opposition to Infidelity, and of the imbecility and childishness manifested by Christian ministers in assailing Rationalism with their dogmatism, etc. I was very glad to receive information so valuable, and I thought: "I see, my friend, what kind of warfare you like best. You admire the Roman Catholic kind of fighting, but you do not admire that which evangelical ministers have adopted. It is no aim of ours to please our enemies in our mode of warfare, but the reverse; and if we have discovered a weapon which galls you, we will use that same arm more freely than ever." There is a story of an officer who was rather awkward in his manners, and, upon some great occasion, almost fell over his sword in his haste. His majesty remarked, "Your sword seems to be very much in the way." "So your majesty's enemies have very often felt," was the reply. So, when the enemies of the truth are finding fault with our procedure, we accept their verdict when we have turned it the other way upwards. If they do not admire our mode of warfare, we think; it is in all probability about the best method we could adopt. We would still, God granting us help, continue preaching the "foolishness" of the gospel, and deliver again and again the old truth, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Instead of lifting up a new banner (which would better please our adversaries) it shall be the old banner still—"None but Christ." "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that out of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Salvation is by free favor, through the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord. We are now to observe, that the chief glory and majesty of the church lies mainly in the banner which she carries. What cause for terror is there in the banner? We reply, the enemies of Christ dread the cross, because they know what the cross has done. Wherever the crucified Jesus has been preached, false systems have tottered to their fall. Dagou has always fallen before the ark of the Lord. Rage the most violent is excited by the doctrine of the atonement, a rage in which the first cause for wrath is fear. The terribleness of the church lies in her banners, because those banners put strength into her. Drawing near to the standard of the cross the weakest soldier becomes strong: he who might have played the coward becomes a hero when the precious blood of Jesus is felt with power in his soul. Martyrs are born and nurtured at the cross. It is the blood of Jesus which is the life-blood of self-denial; we can die because our Savior died. The presence of Alexander made the Greeks more than giants: the presence of our Redeemer makes believers swifter than eagles, and stronger than lions. Moreover, the powers of evil tremble at the old standard, because they have a presentiment of its future complete triumph. It is decreed of God, and fixed by his predestinating purpose, that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Jesus must reign; the crucified One must conquer. The hands nailed to the wood must sway the scepter of all kingdoms. Like potters' vessels dashed to pieces, must all the might and majesty of men be, that shall oppose the crown and scepter of Christ's kingdom. In Christ preached lies the battle-axe and weapons of war, with which the Lord will work out his everlasting decrees. The church with the name of Immanuel emblazoned on her banner, which it is her duty to keep well displayed, and lifted high, is sure to be terrible to all the powers of darkness. We will close with one or two reflections. Will each one here say to himself: "An army, a company of warriors, am I one of them? Am I a soldier? I have entered the church; I make a profession; but am I really a soldier? Do I fight? Do I endure hardness? Am I a mere carpet-knight, a mere lie-a-bed soldier, one of those who are pleased to put on regimentals in order to adorn myself with a profession without ever going to the war?" "Am I a soldier of the cross—a follower of the Lamb?" Pass the question round, my dear brethren and sisters: Are you soldiers who engage in actual fighting for Jesus, under his banner? Do you rally round it? Do you know the standard? Do you love it? Could you die in defense of it? Is the person of Jesus dearest of all things to you? Do you value the doctrine of the atoning substitution? Do you feel your own energy and power awakened in the defense of that, and for the love of that? Let not one go away without making the searching question. And then "terrible." Am I in any way terrible through being Christian? Is there any power in my life that would condemn a sinner? my holiness about me that would make a wicked man feel ill at ease in my company? Is there enough of Christ about my life to make me like a light in the midst of the darkness? or is it very likely that if I were to live in a house the inhabitants would never see any difference between me and the ungodly? Oh, how many Christians there are who need to wear a label round their necks: you would never know that they were Christians without it! They make long prayers and great pretences, but they are Christians in nothing but the name. May your life and mine never be thus despicable, but may we convince gainsayers that there is a power in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and make them confess, that they, not having it, are losing a great blessing. One other thought. If I am not a soldier, if I am not a servant of Christ in very truth, and yet I come to the place of worship where Christians meet, and where Christ is preached, the day will be when the church of God will be very terrible to me. I will suppose that there is a person listening to this sermon who has been hearing the preaching of the word in this place now for many years. Imagine that the last day is come. You are brought before the great judgment-seat, and this is the question:—"Did this sinner hear the gospel faithfully preached? He is ungodly, he has rejected Christ: does he deserve to be cast away? Did he really bear the gospel, and did he reject it?" If I am asked to give my witness, I must say, "To the best of my ability, I tried to tell him the gospel of Jesus Christ." "Was this sinner prayed for by the church?" There are many of the members of this church who would feel bound to declare "Yes, Lord, we did pray for him." Yes, and all of us should say, "If we did not pray for him by name, we included him in the general company of those who attended upon the means of grace, for whom we made a constant intercession." Is there any member of the church who would be able to make an apology for the rejector of Christ? He has willfully rejected the Savior, he knowingly continued in sin. Will anybody be an advocate for him? Not one tongue would be able to excuse you at the judgment, or to argue against the righteous sentence of God. When the great Judge condemns the sinner to be taken away to execution, the whole church with whom that sinner has worshipped, and in whose presence that sinner has rejected Christ, will become "terrible as an army with banners;" for all its voices will say, "Amen, Amen, Amen! Thou art righteous, O Lord." This is no picture drawn from fancy. Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? They shall sit as co-assessors with the Son of God at the last great assize, and shall say, "Amen!" to every verdict which proceedeth from his mouth. O that the thought of this might be blessed of God's Spirit, so as to lead many of you to be reconciled to God. Jesus is still the loving Mediator, and a full surrender of yourselves to him will assuredly save you. Whosoever believeth on him is not condemned; and this is to believe on him—that ye trust in him, and know that God hath given unto us eternal life—and this life is in his Son who suffered in the stead of sinners, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. The Lord bless you, for the Lord Jesus' sake. Amen. "Return, Return, O Shulamite; Return, Return!" August 10, 1884 by C. H. (1834-1892) "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."— Son 6:13 . The translation into the word "Shulamite" is unhappy: it is unmusical, and misses the meaning. The Hebrew word is a feminine of "Solomon." "Solomon" may stand for the bridegroom's name, and then the well-beloved bride takes her husband's name in a feminine form of it, which is Shulamith, Salome, or perhaps better "Solyma." The King has named his name upon her, and as Caius has his Caiia, so Solomon has his Solyma. He is the Prince of Peace, and she is the Daughter of Peace. Aforetime she was called "the fairest among women," but now she is espoused unto her Lord, and has a fullness of peace. Therefore is she called the Peace-laden, or the Peace-crowned. You know how truly it is so with the justified in Christ Jesus. Because the sound is sweeter, and the sense is clearer, permit me to read the text thus—"Return, return, O Solyma: return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in Solyma? As it were the company of two armies." May the Holy Spirit, like a dove, rest upon us while we linger amid the verses of this Song of Loves. A soul redeemed by blood, and brought by the Holy Spirit into loving, living, lasting union with the Well-Beloved, cannot remain unnoticed. Solomon is known all over the world; Solomon is sought after for his wisdom, and therefore Solyma will shine with something of his brightness, and she will be enquired after too. In the Church of God no man liveth unto himself, or travelleth through the world unwatched. If you are interested in Christ, heaven and earth and hell will be interested in you. Some man are but as a chip in the porridge; they have no savor in themselves, and none comes from them; but the believing man, the Christ-communing man, is full of influences both repellent and attractive, and he may be sure that where he comes he will be known and read. As the house of Israel is among the nations like a burning torch in dry stubble, so also are the spiritual Israel. Voices will cry after the bride of Christ, "Return! Return! Return! Return!" A pilgrim bound for the Celestial City cannot go through the world, even through the worst part of it, such as Vanity Fair, without being noticed, and questioned, and sought after, and if possible ensnared. Do not think, thou who hast been made a living man by the quickening of the Holy Ghost, that thou canst glide through this world as the spiritually dead can do, for they may be quietly borne along to the place of corruption: the life within thee is too strange, too operative to be overlooked. Thou art a wonder unto many, and thou mayest well be so, for God hath wrought great marvels in thee and for thee. Beloved, ye are the Lord's witnesses, and witnesses must not skulk away in the background or remain dumb. When they bear their honest witness it is in open court, where they will be heard and regarded by all who are concerned in the suit, whether pro or con. Oh, saints of God, you are never unobserved, you are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, and none of these witnesses are indifferent to you: they all watch you with steady gaze to see how you run your race. The good are intent that you should so run as to obtain; and there are evil ones who long for your defeat. Solyma is addressed by urgent voices, who plead with her to return to them. For good or evil, multitudes of tongues cry to her, "Return, return, O Solyma, return, return." Will you kindly notice from the connection of my text what state Solyma was in when these calls came to her? She was in her glory and beauty. In admiration the question is asked, "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" A church or an individual Christian in a low state of grace may escape observation. Who cares about a dead church? Who fights with a lukewarm people? But if Jesus Christ be in the church, or in the heart, he will soon be seen. The evangelist tells us, "he could not be hid." You may slip down the street in the night without a candle, and like a thief you may pass by unobserved, but if the Lord has lighted your candle, and you bear it with you, the watchmen will notice you, the dogs will bark at you, and others will spy you out. As fire reveals itself, so also will grace. A bundle of lavender proclaims its own whereabouts by its fragrance, and so does the life of God in the soul. You may be sure that if the Lord of Hosts is with you, and in you, you will assuredly arouse the animosity of some, and the admiration of others. I pray that you and I may be in a bright, clear, forcible condition, as the bride was in this part of the Canticle, then shall we be sought after, and enquired about. It appears that the church in her beauty had gone down to attend to her work. "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." She did not sit down in the house to admire herself, nor go into the street to show herself: she went down into her Lord's garden to attend to her proper work, and then it was that they cried, "Return, return." Neither the world nor Christ himself will call much after us if we go forth to make displays of our own excellences. "Come, see my zeal for the Lord of Hosts," is a wretched piece of self-consciousness, which disgusts more than it attracts. A diligent life is an attractive life. Do thou, like an ant, work in thy season, carrying thy due burden upon the ant-hill, and if thou doest this for love of Jesus thou doest nobly. Plod on without courting approbation, and rest content to do thine utmost for the common weal. In fellowship with thy Lord humbly do thy day's work in thy day. Seek not great things for thyself. Ask not to rule in the court, but be willing to work in the field, seek not to recline on the couch, but take thy pruning-knife, and go forth among the vines, to fulfill thine office, and in that self-forgetting service thy beauty shall be manifested, and voices shall salute thee, crying, "Return, return." It appears, too, that while she was thus engaged, she was the subject of a great stir and emotion of heart. Perhaps she had felt dull and dreary till she entered on her work, but while she was busy with her pomegranates and her nuts, she cries, "Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib." She felt that she could hasten like the chariots of a willing people, who rush to the fight from love of their prince. She felt as if she could run after her Beloved: she could leap, she could fly. Like a chariot that is drawn by Pharaoh's swiftest coursers, her spirit left all behind. Thus vigorous and active, she was watched by many eyes, and soon she heard voices coming from the four quarters of the universe, crying, "Return, return, O Shulamith; return, return." I would, dear friends, that all Christians were what they should be. I am told, but I would not judge, that large numbers of professing people are only half alive, and are altogether asleep. If it be so, I wonder not that they are so inconsiderable in their influence. If they are neither diligent in their Master's business, nor fervent in spirit towards him, they are justly despised by those about them. If it be so with you, my brethren, you are losing the joy of Christian life when you might be filled with delight; you are poverty-stricken, where you might be rich; you are as beggars in the city where you are entitled to take up an honorable burgess-ship. May the Lord revive you! May he forgive your coldness, and set your souls on fire with love to Jesus! If you have life, may you now have it more abundantly! Doth not your Master desire that the feeblest of you may be as David, and David as the angel of the Lord? I speak to you who are the beloved of the Lord, to you who labor in holy service, to you who are quickened with a high degree of spiritual life, and feel your souls within you stirred with sacred enthusiasm. You are worth addressing: may the Holy Spirit make my address worthy of your attention! Let us use our text in two ways; may each one be profitable! First, she hears the lower voices that cry, "Return, return, O Solyma return, return," and she answers them with most conclusive negatives. Read the text another way, and in the second place, she hears voices from above, which cry, "Return, return, O Solyma: return, return," and she answers them by her actions as well as by her words. I. Let us listen for a minute or two, but only with our ears, not with our hearts, to THE LOWER VOICES. Whence come these voices? There are voices from the vasty deep of sin and hell, voices from the tombs which we have quitted, voices from the Egypt from which we have fled. They are crying evermore, like unquiet ghosts, "Return, return." Especially do they call to young souls, who are newly wedded to Jesus, in the hope that they have not as yet forgotten their own kindred and their father's house. When we have gone a long way in the divine life, the world feels dubious of our return, and almost gives us up, preferring rather to accuse than to invite. After many years of faithful service, and of resolute nonconformity to the world, many temptations which assaulted our youth are unknown to our maturity. The devil is not altogether a fool, although he is great in that direction; and therefore he does not continue for ever to use nets which have failed to entangle the birds. If he finds that cajolery will not ensnare us, he leaves his old tactics and tries other methods. When "Return, return" will not woo us, he puts on his lion form, and roars till the mountains shake. Upon young believers he very commonly uses very powerful inducements to go back. In the hope that he is dealing with Mr. Pliable, he exhibits the hardness of godliness and the pleasantness of sin, and draws the moral that they had better retrace their steps. To them he calls as sweetly as his cruel voice can tone itself, "Return, return, O Shulamith: return, return." By old companions he does this. They say, "You have left us all, we do not know why. You have turned a fanatic; you have joined with gloomy Christian people, and you are not half the good fellow you used to be. Are you not getting a little tired of those dreary ways? Are not the rules of Christ too precise and Puritanic? Are not the ways of God too self-denying? Is not godliness too holy and too heavenly for poor fallible beings like ourselves? If so, the door is open: we will welcome you back. It is true you rent yourself away and said that you must needs go on pilgrimage to the Celestial City, but we will not throw this in your teeth if you will give up such nonsense. Come, be a good fellow with us once more. We have not drunk up all the wine, nor broken all the viols. We are care-for-nothings still, and we shall be glad to make you as light-hearted as ourselves. You were a jolly fellow before you took those blues, and turned so squeamish: Come, shake it off, and be yourself again." How winningly they put it! How cleverly they mimic the tones of true friendship! One would think they sought our good, and were anxious to be our guardian angels. Sometimes the desires of nature come to their help, and the tender passion is enlisted on the side of evil. Bright eyes and gentle lips speak to the natural heart, and plead with it to return. The tender love of women has thus played the tempter, and so has the strong affection of men. Courtesy and amiability cry, "Why do you fight so shy of us? You know what happy times we used to have together. Come, you have tried these Christian people and their faith; you must have found it very moping and melancholy: return and be merry once more. See how much more free we are than they, do not live by rule and order; return to the liberty of sin." Thus do her former comrades cry, "Return, return, O Solyma." The old joys sometimes, in moments of weakness which will come upon us, revive upon the memory, and attempt to mislead us. I have known the young Christian remember what he once thought were joys, and though he has clean left them, and hates them, yet in the distance which lends enchantment he does not notice so much of their shallowness, baseness, and brevity, and he thinks to himself, "In those days I laughed away the hours right merrily; life was light as a feather; in its froth and foam I saw rainbows of delight. Shall I try these things again? Was I not too hasty in renouncing them?" All the while the voices cry enchantingly, like the songs of the Sirens, "Return, return, O Solyma; return, return." They bring out their most melodious music, and omit all discordant passages from the sonnet of life. They would have us hark back to what was once our joy. Oh, brothers, 'tis a wretched temptation, and yet some fall before it. Do you not know how the world will even call us back to our old cares? We used to fret and worry until by God's grace we were led to try walking by faith, and then the Lord helped us to rest in his love, and wait patiently for him, and now perhaps for years we have had no burdens, for we have cast them on the Lord: we have gone in the morning, and told him the fears of the day, and at night we have had little else to do but to bless him for the mercy which has averted all those fears. We have lived in sweet content, rich in joyful expectation, and not poor even in present felicity; and now perhaps the world says, "You have spent too much of your money on religion; why did you not save it? You wasted a mint of your time upon furthering a kingdom which is imaginary. Oh, if you had given up those energies to the world, and stuck to your business, how much richer you might have been! Come now, quit those dreams, shall those prayer-meetings, leave that tiresome office in the Sunday-school, give up philanthropic speculations, and follow after your personal interests, like a sensible man, you may get on then, if you mind the main chance you may rise in the social scale." There are times when steady, sober people, for whom the temptations of gaiety and vice have no charm at all, stand spell-bound by these more solid but equally degrading offers. Madame Bubble, as you know, offereth to the pilgrim her person, and there are many who turn with loathing from so vile a proffer; but then she also offereth her purse, and there are men like Mr. Standfast, who are as poor as an owlet, to whom that offer comes with dangerous force. Her voice has a shrill metallic ring, as she cries, "Return, return, O Solyma; return, return. Return from generosity to selfishness, from holy zeal to worldliness and prudence. Seek that which all the nations of the world seek after; that which thou canst see with thine eyes, and enjoy with thy mouth." Many are these calls: I need not go into details, you will hear them soon enough. The Sirens are a numerous and ensnaring sisterhood. When do these voices come? Their sound is heard full often. "Return, return, return, return,"—four times over the text hath it. They come so often that the word in the epistle to the Hebrews is more than justified, "And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned." These opportunities come in our way everywhere, and at all times. If you wish to leave off being a Christian, if you wish to follow the world in its pleasures or in its labors, the doors are always open. It is a wonderfully forgiving world if you will but quit your protest against it. If we run away from our old master, and wish to return to his service, his yoke is always ready for our neck, he will never deny us employment, even though it be to feed swine. Only too glad is the devil to pardon runaways. He is not ashamed to return with seven others to the house which he aforetime quitted. Often, often the child of God in his early days hears the entreaties of destroyers, as with all subtlety they plead, "Return, return, O Bride of Solomon; return, return." At times these voices come from quarters to which our hearts lie open Many a man hath been wooed from the ways of holiness by her that lay in his bosom. Samson had his Delilah. Oftener still, the professing Christian woman has been solicited to forsake her Lord by him who should have helped her in her noblest aspirations. Children have been misled by parents, friends by friends, for Satan hath many servitors, and many who do his bidding almost unwittingly. It is a fight to reach to heaven, and few there be to help us in it, but the path to hell is downward, and multitudes thrust out their hands to urge us to the infernal deeps. These cries are borne to us by every gale, in tones both loud and gentle, "Return, return." And, dear brethren, we shall find that they solicit us in our best moments. I cannot fully account for the fact, but so it is, that I am most liable to speak unadvisedly with my lips when I have just enjoyed the raptures of high fellowship with God. Yonder shines the Mountain of Transfiguration in its unrivalled splendor, but lo, at the very foot of it the devil rages in the lunatic child! Our highest graces are not to be basted, for, as the most venomous serpents lurk among the brightest flowers, so are temptations most abundant hard by our most spiritual and heavenly joys. Trust not thyself, O child of God, when thou hast seen the invisible, when thou hast stood within the circle of fire, and spoken with God as only his favourites may! Think not thyself secure when thou comest down into thy worldly business, though thou hast bathed thy forehead in the serene light of communion. As pirates distinctly aim to attack the most heavily-laden galleons, so will Satan assail thee when thy vessel has just left the Gold Coast of meditation and prayer. Therefore, watch thou, and pray evermore. That detestable voice, which dared to ask the Master himself to fall down and worship Satan, will come to thee when thou art most bright and shining with the glory of hallowed fellowship, and it will whisper to thee, "Return, return. Come down from the mount, and break the commandments to shivers at its foot." The fiend will call thee Solyma, quoting thy heavenly name—that name of peace and love—and yet he will dare to say, "Return, return." He will flatter us for our virtues, and yet tempt us to the worst of vices. Get thee behind me, Satan. Avaunt, foul fiend! Even when repulsed he will return to the charge, crouch at our feet, and whine out still, "Return, return." The treasures of Egypt, and the pleasures of sin, are his bait and bribe. We cannot and will not return at his bidding, yet his frequent solicitation puts us to a stand, and makes us cry for help. Notice that our text goes on to say why they wish us to return. "Return, return, that we may look upon thee." And is that all? Am I to be a traitor to my Lord, and quit his holy ways, and forfeit heaven, to be made a show of by thee, O Satan? or by thee, O world? Is this a full reward for treachery—"that we may look upon thee?" Why, their looks are daggers. As the eyes of basilisks are the eyes of the ungodly world; as malignant stars that blast the soul. Whenever you long for ungodly men to see your piety, your piety will wither beneath their glance. Remember how that expression of looking upon Zion is sometimes used in Scripture; in Micah 4:11 we have it—"Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion." They wished to spy out her sorrows and weaknesses, that they might jest at her, and grieve her: these enemies will do the same with you if you give them the opportunity. Trust a wolf at your throat sooner than worldly men in religious matters. They cannot mean you good, nor do you good should they mean it. They will draw you out and then expose you, they will entice you into sin and then report your faults. When the world loves the holy man it is the love of the vulture for the sick lamb. Fear you the worldling, even when he bears you gifts. Now hear Solyma's wise answer to her tempters. She says, "What will ye see in Solyma?" Dost thou ask me, O world, to come back and show myself to be thy friend? Dost thou promise me approbation? Dost thou vow to look upon me, and admire me, and take me for an example? What is there in me that thou canst approve of? What wilt thou see in Solyma? What can the world see in a believer? The world knoweth us not, because it knew Christ not. A blind man wants to see me: I need not go far to oblige him, for he will get but little out of it if I yield to his request. What a vain reason,—"That we may look upon thee"! They are so blind they cannot even see themselves, nor know that they are blind. What have you and I to do with them? No, let us walk in the light, and have fellowship with God, and then our life shall be hid with Christ in God, only to be manifested when our Lord is manifested; and we shall be well content to have it so. Listen, O blind world, while we tell you what you would see if we did come to you. "What will ye see in Solyma?" You would see—we grieve to say it—a conflict within us: "As it were the company of two armies." You would see two things in us; and yet neither would give you satisfaction. There is sin in us, but inasmuch as it grieves us to have it there we will not show it you. We do not wish to make mirth for the daughter of Babylon, and when her children ask us to make music for them by singing one of the songs of Zion, we answer, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" If we must tell you what you would see in us, we will confess our faultiness, but warn you that out of this you would get but little joy. You would see two armies, it is true, but neither of them would yield to you. You would see in us a nature like your own; but it is mortified, kept under, and laid under condemnation. It would give you no great pleasure to see it, for we reckon it to be dead. The dead are poor company. There is in us, it is true, a capacity for all your worldly joys; but the world is crucified to us, and we are crucified unto the world. There is in us a capacity for all your merriment, but if we were forced to be with you we should be dreadful killjoys to you; you would wonder that we did not laugh when you laugh at sin, and that we should not be as ready as you are to run into excess of riot. We should soon weary you, for the Lord has said, "I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people." You would say by and by, "Let these slow souls begone: they hinder our mirth." If we came among you as we are, it would happen with us ere long, as it did with Israel, for "Egypt was glad when they departed." Our nature that is like your nature is put under restraint, and dies daily, and its expiring groans would be sorry music in your ears. Then, do you know we have another army in us? That is, there is a new life in us, that life is the indwelling Spirit of God, as it is written, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them." If we did return at your request, if we came in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ, with the Holy Spirit indwelling our bodies, and making them his temples, you would not know what to make of us, and consequently you would scoff at us, as Ishmael did at Isaac, or envy us as his brethren envied Joseph. You would be sure to ridicule us, for you would not understand us, and therefore you would count us hypocrites and sanctimonious fools. As well might oxen commune with men as the wicked with the godly. We have a life beyond you and above you, into which you cannot enter. We are sorry for you that you will not receive the heavenly life which is in Christ Jesus, but as you have it not, we cannot make you our confidants or associates. You would grieve us, and we should provoke you; and therefore we are best apart. You say, "Return, return, O Solyma; return, return, that we may look upon thee," and our only answer must be, "What would ye see in Solyma?" Nothing but that which would rebuke and anger you: you would see a company of two armies, both fighting against you. Come, young brothers and sisters, you that have been tempted to go back, you cannot even tolerate the thought. You have burned your boats behind you, and must conquer or die. Like one of old, you say, "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back." To go back were to give the lie to the word of God, to make God himself false, to tell the worldling that there are, after all, no pleasures in Christ like the pleasures of the world; it would be to spit in your Savior's face, to play the Judas, to sell Christ for pieces of money, or for the filthy lusts of this present evil world. Go back! It were to renounce heaven and all its glories, it were to choose a terrible death-bed, with a guilty conscience ringing the knell of your soul; it were to choose eternal banishment from the presence of God, and from the glory of his power. You cannot return, you cannot even look back. If thou art a true Shulamith, thou wilt not even deliberate for a moment about it, but flinging thyself into the Beloved's arms, thou wilt cry, "Lord, to whom should I go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." God help you so to do, for Jesus' sake. That is the first part of our subject. II. Now we turn to listen, not with our ears only, but with our hearts too, to the call of THE HIGHER VOICES which cry, "Return, return." Brethren, to go to heaven, to go to Christ, to go towards holiness, is a return to God's people: for God's people are originally his children. Though they are prodigals, and have gone into a far country, they always were his children; even when they spent their substance in riotous living they were still his sons, and each of them could speak of "My Father's house." To come to Christ, and holiness, and hearer, is to return. Besides, all God's people have a new life put into them. Whence came that new life but from heaven and God? Therefore to go towards God is for the quickened ones to return. All God's, people are bound for heaven; it is in their charter-party that they should sail for heaven, and therefore to heaven they must go. When the Israelites came out of Egypt to go to Canaan they were not going to a strange land, they were returning to what had always been their inheritance according to the covenant; they were going out of the house of bondage, and they were returning to the land that flowed with milk and honey, where their fathers had sojourned before them. Now, today, as a child of God, I can hear voices out of the yet beyond, ringing out of the glory, and crying to me, "Return, return." My Father is in heaven, my Savior is on the throne; many brethren have gone before; all my heart is with my treasure, therefore I hear the shining ones crying to me every day, "Return, return, O Solyma; return return!" Every harp in the heavenly choir is ringing out an invitation to all the Lord's beloved, every palm-bearing hand is beckoning to us; every glorified lip is calling us to come up higher. To return, I think, means this,—come nearer to Christ, nearer to God, nearer to holiness. You are saved; seek to be like your Savior. You did enjoy splendid days at first, in the love of your espousals; return to them; walk always in the light as God is in the light. You were once in the banqueting-house, and the banner over you was love: return to that house of fellowship. Every day seek to lose yourself more in Christ, to live more completely in him, by him, for him, with him. Return, return, to greater heights of holiness, to deeper self-denial, to braver service, to intenser love, to more burning zeal, to more of the Godlike and the Christlike. Return, return. The holiest and the best call us that way. Every saint in heaven cries, "Return"; every child of God on earth who is full of the inner life entreats us to return, and chiefly, that dear voice, which once for us cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is always calling to us, "Return, return." Oh, how sweetly doth he use the name himself did give us, our marriage name! Hear him beseech us, "O Solyma, my best beloved, return, return, and come to me!" These are the higher voices. Notice that in the text that word "return" is put four times over. Is it not because it is of the highest importance that every child of God should keep returning, and coming nearer to the Father's house? Is it not because it is our highest joy, our strongest security, our best enrichment, to be always coming to Christ as unto a living stone, and getting into closer fellowship with him? As he calls four times, is it not a hint that we are slow to come? We ought to come to Jesus not only at his first call, but even at the glances of his eyes, when he looks as though he longed for our love: it ought to be our rapture to think only of him, and live wholly to him; but as we fail to answer to first pleas, he cries four times, "Return, return, O Solyma; return, return. Come to thine own Husband, thine own loving Lord." He ceases not to entreat until we do return. Do not the reduplications of this call hint at his strong desire after us, his condescending love for us? It does seem so wonderful to me that Christ should want our fellowship, but he does: he cannot be happy without us. Still he sitteth down upon the well when he is thirsty, and looking across to Samaria's fallen daughter he says to her, "Give me to drink." His people are his fullness; he cannot be filled if they are away: I dared not have said this if the Holy Ghost had not declared it, but it is true. Without his people Jesus would be a Head without a body, and that is a ghastly object; a King without subjects, and that would have been a wretched parody of royalty, a Shepherd without sheep, and that would have been a dolorous office having many pains but no reward. Jesus must have us, or he is a Bridegroom without a bride, bereaven and barren. Oh, how he loves us! How he longs for communion with us! Shall he stand and cry, "Return, return," and will we not come to him at once? Hear him again in another way. He knocks at our door and he cries, "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." Will we not admit him? If he seeks our company, and therefore calls us to return, our spirit bursts her fetters, she is ashamed of the bonds that hold her on the right and on the left. She cries "Let me go; I must be with my Lord; his voice compels me. My soul would leap out of the body rather than not come at him who cries, 'Return, return, return, return.'" I have shown you why the call is so oft repeated. Do you not think it is a very instructive call? Permit me to put it thus: "Return," that is, to your first simple faith. If you have risen to greatness of conceit and pride of knowledge, return to your humble thoughts. Shrink to nothing again in the presence of your God. Come to the cross as you came at first, saying,— "I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me." Return to your first loving intercourse with Christ, for then the days were only bright with his presence, and the night watches were not weary while you could commune with him. Return to the happy love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after him into the wilderness, for those were halcyon days. Return, return, to your first ardor in service. Nothing was too hot, or too heavy for you then; you were impetuous to be engaged in seeking his redeemed. You have grown lazy now, and you think service for God too severe a strain upon you. Return to your first diligence in joyous service. Return also to your eagerness for holy growth. Then you desired to have the best that God could give you: in those days you resolved to be a thorough Christian; not barely to live, but to live unto God in the highest degree. Return unto that, and aspire after more. If you have left the best form of consecration, return to it. Oh, sea, rise once more to high-water mark, if thou hast turned to ebb! Oh, soul, come back to the highest thou hast ever attained or longed for! As the eagle cries, "higher"; as the river crieth, "fuller"; as the day crieth, "brighter"; so let it be with thee. Thou art married to him whose blood has bought thee, and he cannot, will not be in heaven without thee; therefore, hasten to obey while he saith to thee, "Return, return!" I beg you to observe what the spouse has to say to this when she is thus called upon to return to the Lord. The Lord saith to her," Return, return, that we may look upon thee." Is not that a reason for coming back? The Lord says, "that I may look upon thee." He desires your society, and seems gently to hint that you have kept aloof from him. He seems to say,—"You have not been much with me alone lately, you have neglected the reading of the word, and the hearing of it; I have scarcely seen thy face; therefore return, that I may look upon thee." Cover your face and say, "Lord, why shouldst thou look on me? I am full of sin", but then draw near to him, that his look of love may bring thee to repentance, and cause thy sin to pass away. Remember he hath power in his eyes to look thee into purity and beauty. Come and say, "took upon me, Lord; search me, try me, and know my ways." Return, that with infinite pity thy Beloved may see what aileth thee, and then with his dear pierced hand may perform a divine surgery upon thee, and make thee well again. "Return, that we may look upon thee." I think I may use the phrase to express also that intense satisfaction which Jesus has in every believer. With what pleasure the mother looks upon her child: she remembereth no more the travail for joy that a man is born into the world, but with infinitely greater satisfaction doth Christ see of the travail of his soul in every believer. You ought to show yourselves to Jesus, you have cost him so much: he has loved you even to the death, and loves you still, you ought to abide with him. Return to him that he may look upon you. And I think, too, when we live near to him, and get into fellowship with him, Jesus feels a sweet complacency towards us. O dear parents, you know the pleasure you have in your loving children; if they have been away from you for years, what a satisfaction it is again to see them within your doors; there is no sight like it! Your Lord loves you so much that it gives him profound pleasure, it swells his heaven to the brim to see you living in his love. What must be his grief when you go fussing about the world, and have no time to talk with him. When you go out sporting and mixing with his enemies, and say that you have no leisure to commune with him! You give delight to him who is Immanuel, God with us, when you frequently approach him, or constantly abide with him. You make him glad with your secret devotion, your heart's affection, your holy boldness, your all-absorbing zeal. Oh, do come to your Lord that he may look upon you! Did I hear you bashfully say, "What will ye see in Solyma? If Jesus looks on such a dead dog as I am, what will he see in me? I am so full of evil." He will see in you that which delights him. He will see his own work there; yea, he will see himself there. Did you never see the sun reflected in a little splinter of glass? The mirror was scarcely an inch in diameter, yet you saw the heavens in it. Have you never looked upon a bubble blown by a school-boy's pipe, and seen a thousand rainbows in it? When the Lord looks on his people, he sees the reflection of himself: he can see himself in our eyes, and therefore those eyes charm him so that he cries, "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." The infinite love there is between Christ and us makes him see no sin in Jacob, neither iniquity in Israel, but he looks until he exclaims, "Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee." Be not ashamed to return to your Lord, for he lovingly urges thee to do so. Let your heart and your flesh, like two armies, welcome him, let all your inward conflict aim at coming nearer to him. Rest not till, like Jacob's two bands, you are altogether under the blessing of the covenant angel. I will turn my text about a little, and give you another rendering, which will suit the heart which is welcoming its Lord. Our Mahanaim, our meeting of hosts, shall not be for war, now that the Lord invites us, like Jacob to return to the land of milk and honey; but the companies shall be as musical as they are martial. There are within our experiences companies of singing soldiers, choirs of camps. The text exhibits the warring soul, triumphant in her Lord, and meeting him with timbrel and harp. "Spouse of Christ, in arms contending Though thy battle-course must run; Yet with prayers for help ascending, Shout thy praise for triumphs won." Oh, if my Lord will come and meet me, he shall see in me whole choirs of songsters! My heart, like Miriam, shall take a timbrel, and all my powers, like the daughters of Israel, shall follow, dancing and singing with glad accord. On the high-sounding cymbals my heart shall play, singing,—"His own right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory. Glory! Glory! Where he cometh glory dwelleth." When shall I come into his presence, and behold my God, my exceeding joy? Then will I praise him with body and soul, with heart and with voice. His coming with all his perfections, and my coming with all my desires, shall make a Mahanaim, and the two hosts, once met, shall encamp together, guarding the King's pavilion, which glitters in the midst. Then shall the warriors become minstrels, and the soldiers shall be singers, as in the valley of Berachah, where all the people triumphed, and they returned to Jerusalem playing upon harps, and psalteries, and trumpets. Here I leave you in the joyful presence of the King. We cannot cease speaking at a higher point. The Lord keep us in his presence, for his love's sake. Amen. Unpurchasable Love June 6, 1872 by C. H. (1834-1892) "If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be scorned." -- Son 8:7 . That is a general truth, applying to all forms of real love; you cannot purchase love. If it is true love, it will not run on rails of gold. Many a marriage would have been a very happy one if there had been a tenth as much love as there was wealth. Sometimes, love will come in at the cottage door, and make the home bright and blest, when it refuses to recline on the downy pillows of the palace. Men may give all the substance of their house, and form a marriage bond- the bond may be there, but not that which will make it sweet to wear. "If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be scorned." Who, for instance, could purchase a mother's love? She loves her own child specially because it is her own; she watches over it with sedulous care, she denies her eyes the necessary sleep at night if her babe be sick, and she would be ready to part with her own life sooner than it should die. Bring her another person's child, and endow her with wealth to induce her to love it; and you shall find that it is not in her power to transfer her affection to the son or daughter of a stranger. Her own child is exceedingly precious to her, and another infant, that to an unprejudiced eye might be thought to be a far more lovely babe, shall receive tenderness from her, for the woman is compassionate; but it can never receive the love that belongs to her own offspring. Take, again, even the love of friends; I only instance that just to show how true our text is in relation to all forms of love. Damon loved Pythias; the two friends were so bound together that their names became household words, and their conduct towards one another grew into a proverb. Yet Damon never purchased the heart of Pythias neither did Pythias think to pay a yearly stipend for the love of Damon. The introduction of the question of cost would have spoiled it all; the very thought of anything mercenary, anything like payment on the one side or receipt upon the other, would have been a death-blow to their friendship. No; if a man should give all the substance of his house even for human love, for the common love that exists between man and man, it would utterly be scorned. Rest assured that this is pre-eminently true when we get into higher regions, when we come to think of the love of Jesus, and when we think of that love which springs up in the human breast towards Jesus when the Spirit of God has renewed the heart, and shed abroad the love of God within the soul. Neither Christ's love to us nor our love to him can be purchased; neither of those could be bartered for gold, or rubies, or diamonds, or the most precious crystal. If a man should offer to give all the substance of his house for either of these forms of love, it would utterly be scorned. I. We will begin at the highest manifestation of love, and commune together upon it. So let me say, first, that THE LOVE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS . This fact will be clear to us if we give it a moment's careful thought. Indeed, so clear is it that I scarcely like to multiply words upon it, and I do so only that you may dive the deeper into this glorious truth. It must be quite impossible to purchase the love of Christ, because 'it is inconceivable that he ever could be mercenary'. It would be profane, surely, it would amount to blasphemy, and a very high degree of it, to suppose that the love of his heart could be bought with gold, or silver, or earthly stores. No, if he loves, it must be all free, like his own royal self. If he condescends to cast his eyes so far downward as to view the creatures of an hour, and to set his love upon them so that his delights are with the sons of men, it is not possible that he could gain anything from them. No, were we angels, we could not think that he could love us because of some service we could render, or some price we could pay to him. The bare idea runs cross and counter to all we know of Jesus; it is a flat contradiction of all our beliefs and all our knowledge concerning him. He loves us because he pities us, but not because there is a fee when he comes to us as the great Physician. He instructs us because he grieves over our ignorance, and because he knows the sorrow of it, and would have us learn of him; but his instructions are not given in order that we may each one bring our school pence to him. He labors, it is true; but none shall say that he labors for hire; though if he asked all worlds for his hire, he might well claim them for such labors as those which he has performed. The feats attributed to Hercules are nothing compared with the wonders wrought by Christ. He has cleansed stables far more filthy than the Augean, and slain monsters far more terrible than the hydra-headed demons of the ancient fables. True, "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied;" there was a joy that was set before him, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame; yet the love that lay at the bottom of it all was love 'unbought', and love 'unsought', and love in which not so much as a single atom of any thing like selfishness could ever be discovered. The pure stream of his love leaps like the crystal stream, and there is no sediment that can be found in it; it is altogether unmixed love to us. Besides, brethren, there is another point that renders this idea of purchasing Christ's love as impossible, as the first thought shows it to be incredible- 'for all things are already Christ's'. Therefore, what can be given to him with which his love could be purchased? If he were poor, we might enrich him; but all things are his. "He was rich," says the apostle; "he is rich," we also may reply. He could say to us, at this moment, if we were so foolish as to attempt to bribe him to win the love of his heart, "I will take no bullock out of your house, nor he-goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountain: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof." All things are Christ's, not only on this speck of a world, but throughout the universe. The things that are seen by us are as nothing compared with the things that we have not seen; yet all belong to Christ, and he has the power to create ten thousand times more than ever yet have been formed by him. There is nothing which he conceives in his infinite mind but he could at once fashion it by his almighty power; there is nothing he might desire but he could in an instant command it to appear before him. "Let it be," he might say, and it would be even as he had said. With what, then, could you bribe him, and where is the substance of your houses that you would give in exchange for his divine love? O you who dwell in houses of clay, where is the substance which you could bring to him who is Lord of heaven and earth? Our substance? It is but a shadow. Our wealth? It is a child's plaything in his sight; it is nothing compared with his boundless riches. Let us also note that, if Christ's love could be won by us by something we could bring to him or do for him, it would suppose that there was something of ours that was of equal merit and of equal value with his love, or, at any rate, 'something which he was willing to accept as bearing some proportion to his love'. But, indeed, there is nothing of the sort. Gold and silver-- I scarcely like to mention them in the same connection with the love of Christ. I am sure our poet was right when he said-- "Jewels to you are gaudy toys And gold is sordid dust." Think of the difference between gold and the love of Christ, in the hour of pain, in the hour of depression of spirit; what can the strong boxes of the merchant do for him then? But one drop of the love of Christ helps him to bear up, however fast the heart may palpitate, or however much the spirits may have been cast down. What is the use of earthly riches when one comes to die? One laid his money bags close to his heart, to see if they could make a plaster that would give him rest, but they were hard and cold. But the love of Jesus, like the touch of the king's hand in the old superstition, heals even the disease of death itself, and makes it no longer death to die. There is nothing, then, by way of treasure that could be compared with the love of Christ. I will say it, and every believer here will agree with me, that there is no emotion we have ever felt in our most sanctified moments, there is no holy desire that has ever flashed through our soul in our most hallowed times, there is no seraphic longing that has ever been begotten in us when the Spirit of God has been most operative in our hearts, that we should dare to put side by side with the love of Christ, and say that it was at all fit to be reckoned as a fair price for it. Our best is not one-thousandth part as good as Christ's worst. Our gold is not equal to his clay. There is nothing that can be found in us, or that ever will be in us, that we should dare to say could for a moment stand in comparison with his love. Well, then, since there is no coin of metal, or emotion of mental condition, or power of spiritual grace, that could be counted out or weighed as the purchase price of Christ's love, we will not dream of having anything of the kind; for there comes, at the back of this thought, the consciousness that, even if we do possess anything that is really valuable, if there is something about us now that is commendable, and pure, and acceptable, 'yet it all belongs to Christ already'. We have nothing with which we can buy anything of him, because all we have belongs to him. Under the righteous law of God, all the good of which we are capable is already due to our Creator. His command is, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." Very comprehensive, very sweeping, are the demands of the law of the Lord. You must not imagine that there is the slightest truth in the idea that man may come to do more for Christ than it is his duty to do; this cannot be, for all that is possible for us to do, is already Christ's. "You are not your own," and yet you talk about giving yourself to him. You belong to him now, you Christians, doubly so; and all men are under obligation to Christ even for the temporal favors he has bestowed upon them. You, believer, cannot say, "Now I am going to do for Christ something more than, I think, might absolutely be claimed by him." Why, if you are really what you claim to be, you are his already, body, soul, and spirit! All your time, all your money, all your faculties, all the possibilities that are in you, are all his now; and therefore, wherewithal shall you come to purchase his love? No, it cannot be purchased; that is certain for many other reasons besides these which I have given you. But what a blessing it is that 'we have the love of Christ, though we could not purchase it!' The Son of God has loved us; he has bestowed upon us what he never would have sold us; and he has given it to us freely, "without money and without price." And, beloved, this love is no new thing. He loved us long before we were born. When his foreknowledge sketched us in his mind's eye, he beheld us in love. He proved his love, too. It was not merely 'contemplative' love, but it was 'practical' love- for he died for us before we knew anything of him, or were even here to learn about him. His love is of such a wondrous kind that he always will love us. When heaven and earth have passed away, and like a scroll the universe shall be rolled up, or be put away like a worn-out vesture, he will still love us as he loved us at the first. The greatest wonder to me is that this unpurchasable love, this unending love is MINE; and you, my brethren and sisters, can always say, each one of you, if you have been regenerated, "This love is mine; the Lord Jesus Christ loves me with a love I never could have purchased." Peradventure, someone is saying just now, "I wish I could say that." Do you really wish it? Then, let the text serve to guide you as to the way by which you may yet know Christ's love to you. Do not try to purchase it, abandon that idea at once. Perhaps you say, "I never thought of buying it with money." Possibly not, but the mass of mankind think of purchasing it in some way or other. They hear from their priests of certain ceremonies, and they attach great importance to them, and offer them as a bribe to Christ; but these things will never buy his love. They then resort to prayers-- not prayers from the heart, but prayers said as a sort of punishment; and it is thought by many that surely these will procure his love, but they never will. We have even known some who have punished themselves, tortured themselves, thinking they would get Christ's love in that fashion. Now, if I knew anybody who tried to win my love by making himself miserable, I should say to him, "My good fellow, you will never make me love you in that way; be as happy as you can, that method is a great deal more likely to touch my heart than the other." I don't believe that penance and mortification afford any pleasure to God; I think he would be more likely to say, "Poor silly creatures; when I make gnats, I teach them to dance in the summer sunshine; when I make the fish of the sea, they leap up from the waves with intense delight; and when I make birds, I show them how to sing." God has no delight in the miseries of his creatures, and the flagellations that fools give to themselves they deserve for their folly, but they certainly bring no pleasure to the heart of God. It is vain to think of purchasing the love of Christ in such a way. "But surely, surely, we may do something. We will give up this vice, we will renounce that bad habit, we will be strict in our religiousness, we will be attentive to all moral duties." So you should; but when you have done all that, do you do you think have done enough to win his love? Is the servant, who has only done what he ought to have done, entitled to the love of his master's heart because of that? You shall not win Christ's love this way. If you have his love shed abroad in your heart, you have infinitely more than you have ever earned. Suppose any person here were to say, "I do feel so resolved to be saved that I will give all I have in this world to some good cause, and then I will give myself to go abroad into foreign lands, to some fever-stricken place, to die in the service of God." Ah! should you do all that, you would utterly be scorned if you did think thus to purchase the love of God. Will he be bartered with? Will he put up his heart to be sold in the market, he whose very temple was defiled by the presence of buyers and sellers? It cannot be. Go and bid, and barter with your fellow-men; even they will disdain you if you think that love is thus to be procured, but dream not that you are thus to deal with your God. I say again, it cannot be. The text does not merely say that the price would be refused, but "it would utterly be scorned." Love would open her bright eyes, and look at the man, and then she would frown, and say, "How can you insult me so? Take back your gold, and begone;" and God's great love, even when his pity was in the ascendant, would but weep a tear, and then reply, "I pity you, for you know not what you are doing; and I despise the price you bring to me. How could you think that I was such an one as yourself, and that my love could be purchased with paltry pelf that you can bring?" We cannot spare more time for that point, but it is one that you may think over for many a day, and your heart may be charmed with it until you love and bless your Savior with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. II. My second remark is, that, IN OUR CASE, NOTHING CAN EVER SERVE AS A FOR LOVE. If Christ has loved us, or if we are desirous of realizing that he has done so, 'the one thing needful and essential is that we have true love to him'. God's demand of each one who professes to be his child is, "My son, give me your heart." There are many who would like to be thought to be his sons, and therefore every morning they wickedly say, "Our Father which are in heaven," though God is not their Father. If they were to say, "Our father," to him who is their father, they would pray to the devil, for God is no father of theirs. Alas! there are many who want to be thought to be God's children and they will come and bring to him anything but love. Sad, sorrowful truth! If God would but say to men, "I will accept unspiritual service," he might be the God of the whole earth at once; or rather, let me more truly say that he would be the demon of the whole earth, for men do not care what the religion is externally so long as it does not trouble their hearts. The last thing some people will do is to think. "Give you a guinea? Oh, certainly-Excellent is the charity for which you are pleading. A guinea for the hospital? Certainly. Five guineas for a new place of worship? Certainly. When I have money, I am always glad to give it; but don't you come and bother me with any of your doctrines, for I don't want to hear about them. You religious people are so divided into sects and parties, and you are always controverting and contradicting one another, so I do not want to think about these things." That is a very poor excuse, is it not? Because this seems to be a matter which requires a great deal of thought, therefore this person will not give it any consideration at all; and because those who do think about it do not exactly agree on all points, therefore this man says, "I shall not think of it at all." Because all the charts of an intricate portion of the ocean may not happen to be exactly alike, therefore this man will not even study that part of the sea over which his own vessel must go, although there all the charts do agree! He makes an excuse upon some trivial matter to neglect altogether the steering of his vessel. He will strike upon a rock one day, and he will have no one to blame for it but himself. "Oh!" says another person, "I don't mind saying prayers; or I will go to church and listen to the reading of prayers. I don't mind hearing sermons, but don't come and tell me that I have to repent of my sins. I cannot do it; I do not understand what you mean. I join in 'the General Confession' every Sunday; I say that I am a miserable sinner though I don't know that I am particularly miserable, and I don't know that I am particularly a sinner either; but still, I always say that, and I don't mind saying it. Yet if you come to me, saying, 'Repent,' I cannot do that." Men will offer to God anything but that which has to do with the heart. You may call upon them to torment their bodies, as the priests of false religions have done; and they will not object to that. The fakir in Hindustan will pierce himself with knives, or lie upon a bed of spikes, or swing himself up by a hook in his back, and hang there by the hour together in all but mortal agony. A man will do almost anything except bow his heart before his God; he will not confess that Jehovah is Lord of all, and that he himself is a poor sinful creature who deserves to be punished; he will not obey a law that is spiritual, and demands the allegiance of the secret thoughts and intents of his heart; and he will not accept a faith which is so superlatively pure that it demands that sin be given up, and tells him that even when given up it must be washed out in the precious blood of Jesus, and that a man must exercise repentance towards God and faith in the Savior or he cannot be saved. The most unpopular truth in the world is this sentence which fell from the lips of Christ, "You must be born again" and, consequently, there are all sorts of inventions to get the truth out of those words. "Oh, yes!" say some, "you must be born again, but that means the application of aqueous fluid to an infant's brow." As God is true, that teaching is a lie; there is no grain or shade of truth within it. "Except a man be born again" (from above), "he cannot see the kingdom of God." No operation that can be performed by man can ever regenerate the soul; it is the work alone of God the Holy Spirit, who creates us anew in Christ Jesus. Men do not like that truth; the spiritual still displeases the natural man. They will profess to worship God in Jerusalem or at Gerizim, and fight about the place where he ought to be worshiped, to show how little good their religion has done them! They will not speak to each other, the Jew will have no dealings with the Samaritan, to prove how unlike he is to the God who makes his sun to shine both on the just and on the unjust! But when you utter this message, "God is a Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," they are offended, and turn away. Still the truth holds good, whatever men think of it. If you give not to God your heart, you have given him nothing. If you give not to God your soul, if you love him not, if you serve him not because you love him, if you come not to him, and surrender to him your inner self, you may have been baptized-- immersed or sprinkled-- you may have come to the communion table, you may have bowed your knees until your knees have grown horny, you may have prayed until you are hoarse, and wept until the fountains of your eyes are dry, you may have given all your gold, and lacerated every member of your body with mortifications, and starved yourself to a skeleton, but you have truly done nothing towards obtaining love to Christ. The substance of your house is utterly scorned if you offer it to the Lord in the stead of the love of your heart. Love he must have; this is his lawful demand. His people delight to render it; and if you do not, then you are none of his. III. This takes us to a third truth, which is, that THE SAINTS' LOVE IS NOT BY CHRIST'S GIFTS. The love of saints to their Lord is not given to Christ because of his gifts to them; I must explain what I mean, lest at the very outset I am mistaken or misunderstood. We love our Lord, and we love him all the more because of the many gifts he bestows upon us; but 'his gifts do not win our love'. I will show you why. All that he has given me today, he gave me many years ago. The covenant of grace was always mine. I heard the preacher tell about it. He told how Christ had died for me; that he had loved me, and given himself for me. Truly, he had done so; he had poured out his blood for my redemption. I would not believe it to be so, or, believing it, I did not think it was of any consequence to me. Then the preacher spread out the rare gifts of Christ before me, and I saw that he had given these to such as believed in him; but I did not think them worth examining, and I turned away from them. I should never have loved him if he had not given me much more than the substance of his house. I needed his blessed Spirit to show me the value of the substance of his house, and above all, to show me that for which this day I love my Savior best of all, namely, himself, HIMSELF. Oh, it is "Jesus Christ himself" who wins the love of our hearts! If he had not given us himself, we should never have given to him ourselves. All else that may be supposed to be of the substance of his house would not have won his people's hearts, until at last they learned this truth, and the Spirit of God made them feel the force of it, "He loved me, and gave himself for me." "My Beloved is mine, and I am his," is now one of the sweetest stanzas in love's canticle. The spouse does not say, "His crown is mine, his throne is mine, his breastplate is mine, his crook is mine;" she delights in everything that Christ has as a King, and a Priest, and a Shepherd; but, above all else, that which wins and charms her heart is this, "He himself is mine, and I am his." But I meant mainly to say, under this head, that 'there are some of Christ's gifts that do not win our hearts', that is to say, our hearts do not depend upon them. And they are, first, his temporal gifts. I am very thankful, and I trust that all God's people are also, for health and strength. I have lost these sometimes, but I did not love my Lord any the less then; neither do I love Christ this day because I am free from pain. If I were not free from pain, I would still love him. Christ has given to some of you a competence, you have all you want for this world; but is that why you love Christ? Oh, no, beloved! if he were to take all away, I know that you would love him in your poverty. The devil was a liar when he said of Job, "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have not you made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face." We do not love God altogether for what he gives us in this world; ours is not such poor cupboard-love as that. We love him because he first loved us, and we do not pretend to have climbed to that high state of disinterested love in which there is no gratitude mingled with it. We always must be grateful to him, and love him for that reason; but still, temporal things never win our heart's love to God. There are numbers of you who have health, and wealth, and many other things that so many desire, but they never make you love God, and they never will. You love them, and make idols of them very readily, but they do not lead you to love the Lord; while the children of God, who love their dear Savior, can tell you that they do not love him because of what he gives them, for if he takes from them, they love him all the same. With Job, they say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." They do not love him simply because he caresses them, for if he chastens them, they love him still, and kiss the rod with which he smites them. I meant also to say that 'we do not love Christ because of his temporary indulgence of us in spiritual things'. You know, beloved, our Savior very frequently favors us with manifestations of his presence. We are overjoyed when he comes very near to us, and permits us to put our fingers into the prints of the nails. We have our high days and festivals when the Bridegroom is with us, emphatically with us. He takes all the clouds out of our sky, and gives us the bright shining of the sun; or he opens the lattices, and shows us himself in a way only second to that in which we shall see him when we behold him face to face. And oh, how we love him then! But, thank God, when he draws the lattice back again, and hides his face, we do not leave off loving him because of that. Our love to our Lord does not depend upon the weather. True, our love is not manifested to him so sweetly when we are in the dark as when he cheers us with his smile, but still it is there all the while. We could not let him go. "Though he slay me," -though HE slay me-- he who loves me, though he turn to be my enemy, and slay me-- "yet will I trust in him." We will hold to him still, and love him still, not because of the substance of his house, but because of what he himself is. There are times when we are half inclined to say with the elder brother, "These many years have I been with you, privileged to serve you, and yet you have not given me so much as a kid that I might make merry with my friends." Perhaps we have been long without the light of his countenance, and have had no love-tokens from him; but for all that we will remain in his service, and abide in his house; and even if our Father should answer us roughly, we will tell him that he is our Father still. We do not love him merely for the substance of his house, but for himself, and because his Spirit has made love to him to be an instinct of our new nature, and has put within us such a principle that we cannot help loving him. Even if we should be called to pass through terrible trials and adversities, and should have to walk a long time in clouds and darkness, yet still would we love him and rejoice in him. IV. The last observation I shall have to make upon our text is this, THE LOVE OF SAINTS CANNOT BE BOUGHT OFF FROM CHRIST AT ANY PRICE. The love of some people to religion is very cheaply bought, and very speedily sold. It is very lamentable to notice the great numbers of people who are quite content to go and worship God with Christian brethren, and to hear the gospel preached, while they are themselves poor, or in middling circumstances, but who find, as soon as they have accumulated a little wealth, that the world has a church of its own, and they must go there, "because, you see, everybody goes there; and if you are cut off from Society, where are you?" I have been asked that question, sometimes, and I have replied, "Where are you? Why, where Christ would have you to be-- outside the camp, bearing his reproach.'" But that place of separation, "outside the camp," is a position which is not always taken up cheerfully by professedly Christian people. It is very sorrowful to see how, because God has entrusted them with wealth, they get drawn away from the gospel, and from the Church of God; and though they are troubled a little at first, they soon get rid of one scruple after another, and subside altogether into worldliness. Well, now, I am not altogether sorry that there is this test in the world. Every good husbandman keeps a winnowing fan; of course, he that is foolish, when he sees a great heap lying on the barn door, says, "All this is my wheat that I have brought in." He does not want to have it diminished, for it is the result of his labor; -but if he is a wise husbandman, he says, "Though I have brought in a great heap, I know that there is chaff with it," and he is glad to have the winnowing fan used, and the corn tossed up that the fresh breeze may blow through it. If the mere professors go, let them go. "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us." There are some who go away from Christ's people, and renounce religion and love to Christ, because of business. It will pay better in certain lines not to be religious; and therefore, as the main thing with them is to get money-- religiously, if they can, but irreligiously, if need be-- therefore, by-and-by they are offended, and they sell Christ Jesus. I am pained to see the numbers of people who go and live in the suburbs of London, and who make that an opportunity for selling their religion, such as it is. It is not long ago that I stood at a dying bed, and a part of what I heard there was, "O sir, ten years ago, we used to be members of such a church; we came to live out here, but there was no place of worship handy, so we have not been anywhere." That person was dying without hope, after selling Christ for love of a little country air. That was about all it was, and little more was to be gained by it. "Oh, but!" asks someone, "do saints sell Christ like that?" No, not they; these are only the 'professors' who have mingled with the saints. These are like the 'mixed multitude' that came out of Egypt with the children of Israel; howbeit they are not all Israel that are of Israel. The saints sell Christ? No, they are too much like their Master to do that. You recollect how Satan took their Master to the top of a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and said, "All these things will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Wicked thief! It was not his to give; yet he tempted Christ in that way, but Jesus answered, "Get you hence, Satan: for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve." If any of Christ's followers are tempted in the same fashion, let them give the same reply. All the substance of the devil's house could not win the love of that man who has set his affection on Jesus. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" The cruel Romanists have taken the martyrs into the lone dungeon of the Inquisition, and tormented them there in such a way that it pains us even to read or hear of what they suffered. But did they give up Christ? No, not they; they never would. At other times, they have taken the Christians into a palace, and said, "We will clothe you in scarlet and fine linen; you shall fare sumptuously every day; but you must give up Christ." Yet they would not. All the substance of this world has been laid at the feet of holy men, and they have rejected the price with scorn. I know men today, and rejoice to know them, who have sacrificed honor and position among men, who have borne abuse and scorn, and have been glad to bear it, and counted it their privilege that they were not only permitted to have Christ as their Savior, but also that they were allowed to suffer for his sake. O brethren and sisters, may the Lord so clothe us with the whole armor of righteousness that no temptation may ever be able to wound our love to Jesus! Let us feel, "We can let all else go, but we can never let him go." "If on my face for his dear name, Shame and reproaches be," there let them be for his sake. Give me but a vision of the Crucified, let me see that thorn-crowned brow, let me but gaze into his dear languid eyes so full of love for me, and I will then say, "My Master, through floods or flames, if you shall lead, I'll follow where you go. When the many turn aside, I will still cling to you, and witness that you have the living Word, and that there is none upon earth that I desire beside you. I will give up the treasures of Egypt, for I have respect unto the recompense of the reward. I will let the ingots of gold go, every one of them, I will cast them into the sea without regret; but if you will abide in the vessel, my soul shall be content. Bind me to your altar, for I am but flesh and blood, and may start aside in the trial-hour. Cast the links of your love about me; chain me to yourself; ay, crucify me; nail me to your cross, and let me be dead to the world, for then the world will leave off tempting a corpse. Let me be dead with you, for then the world, that cast you out, may cast me out, too, and have done with me; and it were well then to be counted as the offscouring of all things for your dear sake, my Lord!" If a man should give all the substance of his house to bribe the saints to sell their Lord, it would utterly be scorned. By this test shall we prove you, O professors! By this trial shall it be known whether you can stand firm in the evil day. God grant that you may, for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake! Amen. This module was created by wlue777. This module was created by wlue777 Son 8:11-12. Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, which is mine, is before me:“The great Husbandman has graciously let his vineyard out to me, that I may keep it, and dress it; he has made it mine for the time being. I have some ground to till, some plants to tend, some vines to prune. It may not be a very large vineyard, still, it is mine, and I am accountable for it, and must look well to it. It is before me, I am thinking of it, I am caring for it, I am praying about it.”Son 8:12. Thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.This is our resolve, — that our greater Solomon shall have the profits and proceeds of his own vineyard. It is ours on lease, but the freehold is his. He “must have a thousand,” and we shall be well content with our share of the vintage, joyful and glad that we may have “two hundred.”Son 8:13. Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.“For to hear that voice will be far better than the ‘two hundred’ which shall be my share of the fruit. If I may have thee with me, O my Lord, I will be better pleased, though my portion of fruit should be very small indeed, for in having thee my portion will be great indeed! I hear, my Lord, that some of thy people live with thee until they are called thy companions. There are some whom thou dost call thy friends, there are disciples whom Jesus loves. These ‘hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.’ Unstop my deaf ear, give me a sensitive spirit, let my soul thrill, and my heart throb, and my whole being delight to obey every syllable that falls from thy blessed lips. ‘Thou that dwellest in the gardenia, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.’”Son 8:14. Make haste, my beloved,“Do not let me have to wait long for thee, O my Beloved! Even at the beginning of this service, cause me to realize thy presence.”Son 8:14. And be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.“Are there mountains that divide me from thee? Come and leap over them; for thou art swift of foot, and sure of standing: ‘Be thou like to a roe or to a young hart,’ and when thou comest, the mountains of division shall change into mountains of spices, and all around me shall be sweet.” This exposition consisted of readings from SOLOMON’S Son 8:11-14; Isaiah 5:1-7; and Luke 13:6-9.