And further still. We have, in the actions of this book, souls in different elevations, the betrothed one, and "the daughters of Jerusalem." How much is that known among themselves, and contemplated in the illustrations and teachings of the New Testament! All are not fully formed--not fully in the measure of the stature, so to express it. "We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts." All are not alike in the liberty of the dispensation. Such draw out the sympathy of the saint established in the grace of God, and solicitous care, and prayer, and inquiry of the Lord, are made about such, as here. See chap. viii. 8.
Indeed, I know not that anything can be more in the harmonies of the Spirit, in the combined and glowing lights of the Gospel, than the utterance of the betrothed one in this short passage. Chap. viii. 8-10. The actings of her soul, both towards others and towards the Lord, are the Spirit's sweetest and choicest workmanship. She has respect to "the infirmity of the weak," desiring for them strength and edifying in the fuller measure of Christ, and yet all the time owning full oneness and relationship with them in Him, while she rejoices in her own certain, happy assurance, and the fulness of her growth, even to an ecstasy, that her breasts were like towers! and because of that, knowing her Lord's favour towards her, and delight in her. And sure we may be, that all this is purely and richly the way of a believing, renewed soul. Full adoption of the weak, with desires for their larger liberty and assurance, and yet certainty of personal standing in the most undimmed joy of entire assurance, with perfect persuasion that all this liberty and confidence were thoroughly to the heart and mind of Jesus.
Nothing can be more perfect, I believe, than all this in the harmonies and lights of a spiritual mind, according to the strictest sense of evangelic truth.
So again and again, in the gospel history, we find Jesus led to forget His sorrows when beholding faith in a sinner. He found there, as I have already stated, the refreshment of His spirit. He found a transient forgetting of His sorrows among the Samaritans, from the Centurion, from Zaccheus, and from the spikenard and fellowship of Mary. He seeks the same here. He comes to His espoused one, that He might find, in fellowship with her, some other and far different thing than that rejection and refusal which He was ever meeting in the world. And is it not also so, that if the saint be sluggish and careless, the faithful kindred in Christ will help the discipline? If Jesus say, "Could ye not watch with Me one hour?" Paul will say, "Quit you like men, be strong." So in the action of this book. Jesus leaves a memorial of the soul's drowsiness on "the hole of the door," that the conscience may take alarm; and the watchman of the city smite her, and the keepers of the walls draw the veil from her face. Chap. v.
The harmonies of the "one Spirit" are heard in all this. And so, in the course of these little songs, I discern the way of the Lord toward a repentant, recovered soul. See chap. vi. 4-13. She had just refused to open her door to Him, but, through discipline, had been brought to fervent communion with Him again. v. 2-vi. 3. And now His eye and His heart are full of her again. He looks on her as beautiful as ever. She is His "undefiled," and nothing less; no upbraidings pass His lips. Her motion towards Him is comely and graceful in His esteem. And He lets her know that her repentance had given Him pleasant and wondrous refreshment. As soon as she was made willing (Psalm cx. 2), He got into a chariot to bear Him away speedily and joyously to her. vi. 12, margin. She may be a wonder to herself, she may take a place unworthy of any notice (v. 13); but the Lord and angels rejoice over her. As we know in the Gospels, the ninety and nine just ones can be left for the one prodigal; the angels in heaven rejoice; the house makes merry; the friends of the beloved triumph over the returned Shulamite. She is like the returned Jacob: the Mahanaim, the hosts of God, salute them both, wait at the threshold of the land or of the house, to do their Lord's pleasure toward them, and express His welcome and concern for them. Gen. xxxii. 1; Cant. vi. 13.[36]
And what is the longing here but that the day should break? And what is the longing of the same soul in the words of the Gospel? "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly,"--so largely and so exactly do the teachings and the breathings of the New Testament, in these and kindred ways, measure the affections of the heart in this book? Christ dwells in the heart by faith. Christ lies all night between the breasts. Eph. iii. 17; Cant. i. 13. And has not the saint attuned his heart over Jesus in language of like fervour, such as we all use without shame?
"How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see,
Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flowers,
Have lost all their sweetness for me;
The midsummer sun shines but dim,
The fields strive in vain to look gay,
But when I am happy in Him,
December's as pleasant as May.
"His name yields the richest perfume,
And sweeter than music His voice,
His presence disperses my gloom,
And makes all within me rejoice:
I should, were He always so nigh,
Have nothing to wish or to fear,
No mortal so happy as I,
My summer would last the whole year."
These are among the seals set upon this beautiful portion of God's Word by the spiritual mind of the believer, and also by kindred truths and principles found in other scriptures. And it has been happily said, that "if there be no express allusion to this book in the New Testament, the same allegory, as portraying the same truth, evidently appears to have been familiar to the minds of the writers of it, and to the minds also of the people whom they addressed. Not more abruptly does John the Baptist, for instance, refer to our Lord as 'the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world,' as being the character of the Messiah which all would know and understand, than he does to the same blessed Person in the character of the Bridegroom of the Church--'he that hath the Bride is the Bridegroom.'"
And is it not seasonable, in these days of growing irreligiousness and worldliness, to warn one another, beloved, to keep our minds incorrupt in the simplicity that is in Christ? In the preparation-season, which the present age is, and which the Canticles contemplate, Eve was getting ready, under the forming hand of God, for Adam, and for Adam only. Adam slept for Eve, and Eve was made for Adam. So with Christ and the Church. He slept in death for us, and we are preparing, under the Holy Ghost, for Him. "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." As he says also in another place, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again till Christ be formed in you," Christ, and Christ only, Christ in His precious sufficiency for a sinner, in answer to the Hagar or Galatian thought of "days, and months, and times, and years," that other gospel which yet is not another.
But this is assailed. The Gospel, in its claim on the sinner to give his undivided confidence to Christ, has been abroad on the lips of a thousand witnesses, to the gladdening of thousands of souls. The enemy has watched and hated this. Working in the scene in which he goes "to and fro" and "up and down" (Job i. 7), he is busy to seduce the heart from this Gospel. And is not his success far beyond the measure of the fears of any of us? The religion of fleshly confidences or of ordinances is to this hour among us. It admits of worldliness; and worldliness is, at this same hour, flourishing in company with it. There is the erection of temples for worship, and of palaces for the worshippers; stricter care to observe, in its season, due attendance in the sanctuary, together with unparalleled skill and energy and enterprise in advancing the indulgence and elegance of human life, so as to make the world a desirable and safe place to live in--a place where religion may now be seen to be observed and honoured.