The Hill of Frankincense: On the Latter Part of the Song of Solomon
Table of Contents
The Hill of Frankincense: On the Latter Part of the Song of Solomon
OH! Thou art fair, Lord Jesus,
Fairer than all beside—
Fairer than earth’s fair sunshine,
Or ocean’s glittering tide—
Fair in Thy shadeless glory,
Fair in Thy changeless love—
Fair in Redemption’s story,
Fair on the throne above.
“I am come into My garden, My sister, My spouse.”
The north and south winds have done their work. The precious “afterward” has yielded the precious fruit, and the soul longs for Him to enter in and enjoy the work of His own patience. Nothing now to make ashamed, nothing that our spirit would fain hide from Him. Not as Adam hiding, but as Martha and Mary, who made the supper for the One whom at last they could so fully trust and appreciate.
“I am come into My garden.”
While they call He answers. How unlike the treatment of His own blessed call, when He had prepared everything, and killed the oxen and the fatlings, and the sluggish heart refuses, and the earthly mind prefers the farm and the business, and the natural claims to His almighty favor and unsearchable wealth. Oh! blessed circumstances, whatever they are, that enable Him to enjoy the heart, and the Church in which He deigns to dwell. We may not like the furnace which consumes the dross, but we all like the coming forth as gold; and who does not know something of the foretaste of heaven, when the Lord can make His presence felt, not to search and rebuke and grieve, but just to reveal Himself, in all His fullness, whilst in wondrous grace He stoops to receive and delight in our adoration and love?
“I have gathered My myrrh with My spice; I have eaten My honeycomb with My honey; I have drunk My wine with My milk.”
When He could rest in His love for a little space, although knowing so well that the weeds and the briars would soon again need His hand, and the garden lose its fairness without His constant watchfulness and perpetual care. Not only the long hunting for the wayward sheep, but the joy in heaven in the presence of the angels. Not only the weary hour at the well, but the “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” Not only the groaning in spirit, but the “Father, I thank Thee.” Not alone “How am I straitened till it be accomplished!” but the “It is finished” on the cross.
“Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.”
The perfection of His work. The completeness of the burnt-offering, the meal and the peace-offering, put forth for our sustenance and our strength. The wine-press trodden alone, that the glorious wine, rich indeed for heaven and earth, may be given to our childish lips; for, oh! what months and years of training and restraining, and chiding and teaching, before we can even know what is the “good wine.” “Thou hast kept the good wine until now,” said the ruler of the feast, proving the difference between the Lord’s least and man’s best. Now in Christ all the depth of the goodness and love of God are revealed; of old the boughs were bending ‘neath their rich fruit. The tabernacle and the ark, the pillar and the cloud, all shed their lustrous fruit of His love and care around them. The temple filled with glory, and the nations at ease in Zion—contrasting in peace the figs and corn of Canaan with the leeks and tares of Egypt’s servitude— all shed the halo of promise fulfilled, and His sheltering arm outstretched. But the grape was untrodden. In Christ alone was the wine poured out. The door of heaven opened—as wide as the heart of God could open it—to let the Son of God pass out from the glory which He had with His Father before the world was, to the babe’s manger—cradle and the peasant’s cot. Not to the weak, rebellious Israel could He cry, “I have called you friends.” One here and there, perhaps— “Abraham my friend” —with Moses, “as a man speaketh to his friend,” but to those who could say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” to us who are “members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones,” for “the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth,” but “all things that I have received of My Father I have made known unto you.”
How have we received the “all things”? How have we drunk of the wine? How have we entered into this wonderful friendship of Jesus? Half-hearted often. Weak and cold and wayward. Taking of the “all things” just what suits us. We have not always drunk “abundantly,” and thus often done despite to the overwhelming love which pours out its rivers and floods of grace in order that each may be filled and refilled—satisfied and satiated—until the well of water spring up for others in this parching ground. “Wine that maketh glad the heart of man,” that His joy might remain in us, and thus our joy be full. His joy in His finished work—in the power of His advocacy; in the Holy Spirit building and tending and beautifying the fair edifice in which He dwells; and joy in the future, when all the wondrous purposes of His boundless love shall be fulfilled, and heaven and earth filled with His transcendent glory; the glory which, for awhile, He hid in the humble form of Jesus of Nazareth, which lingers still within the portals of heaven, not willing that any should perish, but which shall one day flow out unrestrained in the light of its cloudless brilliancy, and wrap the whole universe in the light of the knowledge of what He was, and is, and shall be throughout eternity. “I sleep,” we must all cry at times, feeling how poor is our comprehension of the least of His perfections, or His gifts to us; but “my heart waketh.” The love is there; dimmed and choked by a thousand things of earth and of the old nature, but still stirring in answer to His voice. Why do we run so unevenly? Why are we so sluggish? Why do we not go on in the power of union? Not for the mountain-tops—they come to us all, thank God—but for the Ruth-troth of daily companionship, daily service, daily communion. Not that He may alone “come in and sup,” but that He may “abide with us.” To have the loins always girt; the lights always burning; to lay aside for all seasons the weights that hinder, and “so run.” Our “heart waketh,” but we want all our energies of body, soul, and spirit awake. Not to have to “rise up” when He knocketh, but to be there with our hand upon the lock, our ear attentive, our foot on the spring.
Dr. Kitto says that in the East there is a hole near the fastening of the door, through which a man’s hand can pass so as to unlock the door from within. “Open to me,” He cries; but He puts His hand through the hole. He cries; but He puts His hand through the hole. He opens, but He would have us give Him fellowship in this. We should be waiting for Him.
“My head is filled with dew, and My locks with the drops of the night.”
“The darkness, and the infidelity, and the demon-worship meet Mine eye; the lawlessness, and the hatred, and the wrong, track My steps as I pass through the highways of life calling to the children of men. The land where the light has been most freely shed is throwing open its fields to idolatry and man-worship and lies; and where shall I refresh My heart if not with thee for whom I gave Myself? Who will anoint My head if not thou? Who will meet My heart’s great thirst if thou close thy door? and what wilt thou miss when I pass on without giving thee the ministry of My love and the strength of My communion, and sympathy of My revealed designs!”
He is ever knocking—making us tell Him again and again through life whether He is as precious as He was at the outset, when love was at white-heat, and faith could leap all barriers and look above all clouds. Calling for fresh surrender, while at the same time He gives fresh manifestations of Himself, He is ever the same, although, as the babe which can only thrust its tiny fingers through the father’s locks and answer the smiles it cannot understand, so we only guess at what He is. We do not know Him until we have trodden the pathway for some time at His side, and learned through flood and furnace—through storm and sunshine— what He is, and what He can be. And then we know Him but partially; not as we shall when the earth-wraps are loosed. But He knows us, knows how soon the first fire cools, how quickly the feet weary, and the ardent spirit—once so strong and zealous—grows weak and purposeless. And He knocks, putting His hand through the aperture upon the fastenings of the door to aid our slack fingers.
“I have put off my coat.”
How often is the cry, “I have been the means of bringing some souls to Him; now I am unable for the strife and the effort. I would live on past laurels. I can sit at ease and criticize others, for I have done my share of work.”
“I have washed my feet; how can I defile them?”
“I enjoy the deep things of God; I keep myself from the world. How am I to go out to the soiling highways compelling them to come in? I cannot defile my feet, either for the troublesome lukewarm Christians, or lost, ignorant souls.”
Alas! is it not often so? Aye! My heart, answer thou for me. Too often “I” and “my coat” —too often “I” and “my feet.” No glimpse of the spotless radiance of that stainless-robed One passing through the foulest alleys of life; no tracings of the marks of those defileless feet crossing earth’s miry highway; no echo to the Spirit’s cry, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice.” But He ever knows our innermost being; all the complex workings are clear to Him. He “understandeth my thoughts afar off.” His gentlest whisper scatters sloth; His faintest word stirs all the old ardent longings for Himself and His service. He knows the “heart waketh,” and so He comes—comes for the alabaster box of ointment upon His own head, and the message of peace for others through us; for the dew wiped from His own locks and ours covered for fresh service by the helmet of salvation, and the heart set thrilling anew with the need of the thousands who drift unsheltered to the coming storm.
“I rose up to open to my Beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.”
How soon the outstretched hands become fragrant, and how swiftly now would they do His bidding— “I opened to my beloved.” “But”—
There is ever a “but” for the unready soul. In one sense the Lord cannot wait. He has others to seek, others to watch, others to comfort.
“My Beloved had withdrawn Himself, and was gone.”
Oh! may He grant, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we may never open the door to find Him gone. He will never be “gone” to us as Saviour, that we know; but as the Seeker, He may. To find opportunities of ministering to Him through others missed; the time given us in rich grace for seeking souls past; the moments that might have rejoiced His heart, if spent in intercessory prayer, or praise, wasted. We must not make a heaven of privileges, either of sitting around Him, or of serving Him here. Privileges are not Himself, but we must use the privileges. If we have sat at His feet and worshipped, we must go forth in the strength of such communion to seek those “without hope”; if we have sought souls, and been permitted to scatter the seed, we must sit again at His feet in worship to renew our strength and refill the empty vessel, and pour upon Him the adoration of His intrinsic worth, and the value of the message He gives us for a sin-stricken world. The Israelites must look upon the dewy ground white with the fragrant manna, and gather only for to-day. If we use not our “to-day,” we may not be given a “to-morrow.”
“My soul failed when He spake.”
She had to get ready to greet Him. The heart was not listening.
“I sought Him, but could not find Him: I called, but He gave me no answer.”
One moment He was there with His hand upon the lock, His voice in her ears, the next He was gone. While she was reasoning about herself, He was passing onward without the “might have been” of refreshment for His spirit and strength for hers.
She meets with no tenderness from the watchmen. A soul out of communion gets little from others. All are wanting help and comfort for themselves, very few are at leisure to “soothe and sympathize.”
“They smote me, they wounded me,” many can cry when the spirit is sore with opportunity missed, or His presence unrealized. But He came to her. He alone could have the full tenderness of heart to deal with the slothful or the weak. He did not mean her to wander amidst the selfish or the censorious and heartless ones. He loves to keep Mary at His feet. He gives Benjamin, the weakest and the least, to dwell between His shoulders, covering him all the day. Her veil is taken from her, and she is misunderstood. Eli could misjudge the prayerful Hannah. David’s brethren could taunt him with unworthy motives, and the disciples in their blindness could rebuke the mothers of Israel who had the faith to bring the little ones to Him. We are no “wall of fire” round about to each other, alas! as we might be. We are poor, weak things, often wounding one another instead of cherishing; and bruising and jostling and scolding, perhaps, because our own needs are great, and we look for help instead of giving it. Only the infinite heart of Jesus can meet the need of the finite pilgrim, and part of our mistakes are surely because we seek from each other what He alone can bestow.
“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my Beloved, tell Him, that I am sick of love.”
Instead of interceding for others, as she might have done had the door been open and her soul in the full strength of communion, she requires the intercession of others.
And her loss and her anguish rouse the onlookers.
“What is thy Beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women?”
What and who could be so precious to her as to make her forget everything—position, possible dangers, misrepresentations—all and everything to find Him? “What,” says the world, “makes these people so crazy?” The scientist will lose his health and ease, and brave dangers and poverty, to peer into the mines of mystery open to him; the artist suffer and slave for his beloved art; the patriot welcome all hardships, and endure all pain for his beloved Fatherland; and the world is not surprised. And it is well; it does us good to see wholeheartedness in anything. The world applauds and admires, and raises statues to such ardent souls who have found one thing as center for their life’s best energies. When the living Person of the living God has attracted and conquered the soul, when every fiber of, man’s being finds not only a worthy object for its strength and devotion, but is fed as it feeds, and increased as it gives; when all the million problems that ever tortured individuals, or nations, are solved in Christ the crucified, and a feeble human being treads with never-tiring footstep his rockland of colossal strength, refusing to change it for the shifting sand, the world wonders and exclaims. Christians too, alas! are sometimes surprised at every thought, every action, every bit of life’s fair filling centered in Him. “Some of self and some of Thee”; but to those who know the infinite sweetness of a life wholly His, every step of the way, every cloud in the sky, every difficulty in the path, only makes the spirit cling closer to the “Faithful and True,” the Shepherd who knows so well the sheep, and is known of His. “My Beloved is white and ruddy,” she cries. “You have sought perfection in heroes and earthly marvels, but for each there was a spot on the robe, and a flaw in the gem.”
Even the Lord’s most precious ones have lifted at some time a soiled hand, or wept over a spattered garment.
“The chiefest among ten thousands, the altogether lovely.”
Abraham with a lie on his lips, yet the “friend of God,” who could trust him well enough to bid him lift his father-hand to slay his son! Moses allowing his shepherd heart to be provoked, although he had companied forty days and forty nights with the Lord on the mount. David chanting his praises in the cave and in the forest, and staying his hand over the sleeping Saul, yet falling beneath the shaft of Satan; and Paul, the giant of grace, raising his strengthened hand to strike the “whited wall,” all cry, “Not in us is the worth that never lessens, the glory that never pales.” Even in heaven they would weep were there not the Worthy One, whose intrinsic beauty should flood its light upon all hearts, and shed abroad the divine and moral perfection which alone can satisfy.
“His head is gold,” she cries. His thoughts as high above ours as the heavens are high above the earth.
“His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.”
Not only divine thoughts, but strength and energy to carry them out.
“His eyes as the eyes of doves.”
The love shining out beneath the strength in every glance; the love which permeates every thought and action; the love that is Himself. He is love, and He is light. He only needs hearts into which He can pour it, for heaven alone cannot contain it. The tears of sympathy with Martha and Mary, the look that broke Peter’s heart, the gaze which penetrated the deceit of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the beholdings of the city, “the joy of the whole earth” which He had “desired for His habitation” (Psalm 132:13), and which should have hailed Him as her Messiah and King, the weeping for her sorrow and suffering which she alone should bring upon herself all was, indeed, “fitly set.” His face never turned from the poorest or the meanest. Even Judas, vile traitor that he was, might gaze upon it all day long, seeing all its wondrous changes of pity and love, and patience and displeasure. Truly, as “towers of perfume” which should shed fragrance over the whole world.
“His lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.”
She knew Him well. She had considered Him—studied Him—and now her heart can tell out the perfections so well known, so engraved upon her heart. Had not His words to her been as lilies— “Open to me, my Beloved, my dove”? Had not His voice thrilled her soul? And now she has got beyond the sound of it! What precious words passed into weary hearts when He was on earth! What uplifting in them! What boundless power enveloping the spirit! “This day,” to the soul bowed down with remorse. “Go in peace,” to the trembling sinner. “Young man, arise,” for the stricken mother. “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,” to the childish disciples; and, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” to the ignorant Peter.
The precious lilies with the myrrh. Those blessed lips were closed before the high priest and governor. “He answered him nothing.” Not for such should their fragrance be shed abroad. His many questions must remain unanswered, for the curiosity, if not open enmity, was against the holy, spotless Son of God. His hands were stretched out to heal and bless and cheer. The nails could not blot out all the precious deeds; they only pierced in the names of His loved ones, where all Israel was engraven long years before. His whole being was the offering, acceptable and fair and glorious, to the Father. “All the fat is the Lord’s.” His innermost being, ever surging with compassion for the weary, sin-tossed world. Coming, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Seeking the lost. His thoughts, as the Father’s, ever of peace through eternity.
“His legs as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold.”
His steps ever toward the cross; His face set steadfastly towards Jerusalem. Not one step aside, not one stone of the long, toilsome journey to Calvary missed.
All the foreknown pathway calmly entered upon. Truly, as marble-strength, the firm tread resounded day by day in the courts of heaven.
Even Peter’s natural, heart-loving suggestion, “Far be it from Thee, Lord,” meets with strange rebuke. Satan alone could strive to weaken His steps; but Satan could not accomplish it. Strength, such as the Son of God alone could show, mingled with love which shall flood eternity with its golden light: the brazen and golden altar combined: the walk too strong, too pure, too fair for earth to value aright; but when she shall see the Son of man coming in the glory with the mullioned hosts of heaven shining out His glory, then shall thousand millions understand what it was in its wondrous, unfathomable beauty. It is for us, by the Holy Spirit, to comprehend something of it now as we follow on with stumbling footsteps—for us to know what every footfall of His meant; and thus to run ourselves, looking off only unto Him.
“His countenance as Lebanon.”
Mighty in strength. High above the world’s strife and pettiness, as the cedars which fill the air with fragrance and health, on their glorious heights.
“His mouth most sweet.”
With the strong countenance, the words as gentle as a woman’s. The power that could scatter the strongest to an empty husk gave out nothing but the tenderness which was filling God’s own heart.
“Thy sword, it might have slain me,
Thine arrows drunk my blood,
But ‘twas Thy cross subdued me,
And won my heart to God.
Though higher than the highest,
Most mighty King, Thou art,
Thy grace, and not Thy greatness,
First won my rebel heart.”
“This, this,” she cries, “is my Friend—my Beloved, O daughters of Jerusalem.” “This, this!” we can cry, as we see Him in the glory, “crowned with glory and honor”; whom to look upon was “like a jasper and a sardine stone,” surrounded by the rainbow “in sight like unto an emerald.” “This, this!” as we prove Him our great High Priest—the “same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” “This, this!” to the Church and the world, as we press on to where we shall see Him with undimmed sight, and know Him with perfect heart, “our Beloved and our Friend.”
“It is Thyself, Lord Jesus,
Makes heaven seem heaven to me;
Thyself, as first I saw Thee,
Uplifted on the tree.”
“Whither is thy Beloved gone?... that we may seek Him with thee.”
The blessed answer to the full heart’s testimony to the worth of Christ! Where would they find Him? Where can His heart find joy in this world of sin-a world whose depth of iniquity He alone knows who has fully measured the strength of its iniquity, and blasphemy, and resistance to Him?
“In His garden.” In the Spirit-filled souls of His own He finds the “beds of spices”; in the communion of those who have given Him the “hearing heart,” in the fullness of the rich fruit of the Spirit, He can “feed in His garden, and gather lilies.” Oh! if we knew how truly “His portion is His people,” if we understood that no fragrance rises to Him from a world where Satan reigns as prince, and is worshipped as God, save, perhaps, from some lonely sufferer’s bed, some humble heart’s true adoration, some simple spirit’s childlike trust, we should, indeed, seek to be more filled with the Spirit, and led by Him day by day, and hour by hour. He asks in the glory for our praise, and our devotion and love. The spices are His, but He seeks them from us. Mary could bring the precious ointment, and could understand that it refreshed His spirit: the others could only think of the earthly needs, and could not comprehend that He had any. Oh, wondrous condescension! The divine heart of Christ asking food from us! He asked the woman for a draft of water, and when she accepted Him He said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” The cry of the cross, “I thirst,” still sounds from the glory for the unsaved—the perishing, for whom He died—and it is through His own that He can gather the lilies, in the power of realized union that He can find them. Not for our joy and our blessing that the soul is strong and fresh and filled (though it is to our joy, of course), but that He may find gladness and glory and praise in us, that He may “feed among the lilies,” and in some measure even now see of the travail of His soul. We sing that
“Through eternity our soul may be something for Thee”;
but now it can be much for Him, as He could rejoice when on earth over the “fruit” of the “great faith” that had not been discovered, “no, not in Israel.”
“I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.”
Not the cry of the child’s spirit full of the wilderness needs— “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth”—but the union by the Holy Spirit to Christ. “He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” He could not be alone in the glory: He needed her. And, individually, the same Holy Spirit dwelling in Him dwells in us. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” He needs you, and He needs me, just as of old He needed light-holders to hold the light. He is light; and as the stars shine out night by night His light, so we, as earthen vessels, shine out day by day His glory, if unhindered and untrammeled by earth-clouding and self-taint. Someone, writing of the candlestick in the tabernacle, speaks thus of the flower, which the Septuagint calls a “lily”: “So by the flower is expressed the full unfolding of divine truth in actual testimony.” What the Father could delight in from the heart of Christ, He would fain find in us as we trace in some faint measure His footprints.
Is He not enough for all the earthly journey? “Shall He suffice for heaven, and not for earth?” Cannot the could breathe out its full satisfaction in that cry, “He mine,” “I His”?
“Am I not enough, Mine own—
I, needing thee?”
“Who can separate from the love of Christ?” And who can break the union with Him by the Holy Spirit? Do we give the Holy Spirit His place sufficiently? Do we realize enough that He is the sent One from the Father and the Son, as the latter waits in the glory, nourishing and cherishing His own, through Him, until He shall present them as a whole without “spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing”?
“Beautiful, yet terrible,” He calls her. Beauty to Him, and power to the world.
“Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” We do know not half our power.
Someone once said, “If every prayer was a prayer of faith, the whole world would be shaken.”
The unbelief still hinders, for we look at ourselves instead of at the power of the Holy Spirit, and think of our weakness instead of the strength of the risen One; and so the “victory that overcometh the world” is unknown, because faith—the eye that sees Him—is downward instead of upward. He is precious to her, and His glories understood in some measure, so He tells her that she is fair to Him.
“Turn away thine eyes, for they have overcome me.”
Does He ever refuse us anything if we ask in His name by faith? “If two of you shall agree,” is His promise; and, “Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” “Jacob had power, and prevailed.” How much more we who stand in this blessed place of union! Oh, how blessed is the communion life, and how feebly do we enjoy it! He saw beauty in Israel when all else saw only the flaws and the failures, and Balaam’s curse had to become a blessing; and all through the history of the saints it is the same. “Jacob have I loved,” He says. We see the supplanter and the deceiver, and think much of his weakness. Lot “vexed his righteous soul from day to day.” Peter’s denial never mentioned; only, “Lovest thou Me?... Feed My sheep.” All lost and covered in the great heart of Christ, whose love indeed covers the multitude of sins, and sets us fair, spotless, in Himself.
In all the names of Hebrews 11, no word is given of the falls and failures which we know so well. Abraham’s lie; Jacob’s halting steps; Moses’ provocation; the children of Israel’s backsliding; Gideon’s doubt; Samson’s sleep; Barak’s disobedience; Samuel’s parental laxity; David’s dishonor: all lost and covered. Precious for us that He ever “separates the precious from the vile,” and only retains that which is of the Holy Spirit, that which is His own—and beautiful for us to see each other lost and hidden in His love, whose depth we can never know. Well might the French abbe of the commune draw a cross on the wall of his cell before his execution, and write at the top, “The height,” underneath, “The depth,” and on each side, “The length,” and “The breadth.” It will take all eternity to know anything of its beauties. The love and the grace are both alike fathomless, and the glory which He requested the Father we might “behold” is beyond our thought or ken until in the resurrection body, like His own, we shall see Him face to face.
“My dove, My undefiled is but one.”
If He can in any way tell over her beauties to Himself, she is only what He has made her, and, as the moon to the sun, is only reflecting His loveliness.
But “one” throughout the whole world, whether the suffering saints of Armenia, or the brave toilers of heathen lands, or those that strive against the “light-becoming darkness” in our own; there is but one body of Christ, composed of His scattered members throughout the earth, and we can rejoice that we are knit indissolubly to every heart that throbs upward to Him, as “born of the Spirit,” whatever the barriers and bonds of earth that hold us apart now. Cramped and straitened by little things and our own puny hearts, we are but one; and at His coming all caught up together to meet Him in the air. Happy the spirit which can leap all barriers, and, though longing that all should follow His Word alone, can yet embrace, in His own love, every child of His, whether strong or weak, fair or faulty, and rejoice that in this heaving world of strife and wickedness there are thousands and thousands whose lips cry, “Abba, Father,” and whom the Lord knoweth as His. This, of course, is not the true meaning of the verse. She is but one to Him. There is no other. Never has His heart turned to another, though oft, as with Israel, He has been provoked and disappointed during her long history since His ascension. Could He not have peopled other planets if He chose? Could He not have found some other less wayward, less selfish, less puny? But He has never changed. “As a mother He cherished the children of Israel; as Father, Lover, Friend, Husband, He has nourished and cherished the Church on earth, and will. His heart is filled by no other—His dove, His undefiled is but one.”
Oh, boundless, unsurpassable love! Shall we ever be fit to taste its fullness? Oh, fathomless ocean, covering all the might of heaven and earth! What to our spirits, when it is known and extolled by the mullioned stainless ones of heaven, His own glorious hosts; and echoed by that “one,” formed of myriads of spotless souls, whose harmony is untouched by one tinge of self, or one throb of the old nature?
“We would thy daughters should see her and bless her.”
The children of God, the scattered Israelites, who feel that the Messiah has come, but dare not say that He is the rejected Nazarene, should they not bless the hands that stretch out to lead them to His feet; the lips that, condemning them not for whom He cried, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” tell out His own love and His own purposes of blessing in Him, “the King of the Jews”? Should not the whole Church of God draw them with the cords of love, His own strong cords resisted so long, yet ever thrown around them? and would there not be abundant harvest for the thoughts and prayers for His people of old, as there is, and has been, for those who seek to tear the veil from the eyes so blinded by Satan and tradition?
“Who is she that looketh forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?”
Fair as the moon, whose silvery radiance streams upon the dark earth, the Church should look forth to lighten and beautify all below. The still, calm fairness of perfect peace, and yet clear as the sun, whose midday strength pierces to every drooping soul or enfeebled spirit; no crevice untouched, burning in life-giving strength and energy in all its fullness.
Through all the ages the Church has been a “terrible” Church. Terrible when torture and flames only made thousands of strong souls stronger and deeper, loving not their lives to the death, “counting all dross and dung, that they might win Him”; terrible when millions of copies of God’s precious Word scattered their blackened nothingness to the passing winds, and the blotted-out words, and the mutilated pages, left God’s immutable purposes stamped into quickened hearts; and as starving ones cry out the more fiercely for bread as they see it squandered, so all the power of hell and earth could not quench that which was unquenchable. Terrible in weakness and patience. Terrible to-day when even children—as in Armenia—would rather take cruel deaths than deny Him. “I cannot,” said a little girl there, when told that her father was killed for refusing to become a Moslem, and there was the choice for her of a happy home and kindness or, instead, death— “I cannot,” said the child of twelve years; “I love the Lord Jesus. He is my Saviour.” Terrible in its insufficiency to cope with the malice of demons, or the strategy of men, yet in the power that is unseen putting to flight nations and kings, and shining out to the world the paradox, “When I am weak, then am I strong.” Aye! we are mighty, but we know it not. Satan knows it; angels see it: yet we do not fully realize it, and groan and droop like blind giants who know not that their bonds are loosed. It was a matter of course to Paul that there were enemies and difficulties, and hindrances and snares. The Lord told them, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” But was there ever one note of doubt or discouragement from him—Paul? “I can do all things,” he said, in answer to “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Are we soldiers? or are we sleepers? Other soldiers have times of respite; but our enemy never goes off the ground, never lessens scent; and if we sink at ease among privileges, and do not use them only as refreshment and strengthening for the soldier and servant life, then we do not go forth as “giants refreshed” and “men full of new wine,” but as shorn Samsons and as stripped pilgrims. The warrior-heart cannot put off the armor until the Lord puts off the tabernacle of flesh for us.
“Or ever I was aware.”
Looking at the fruits of the valley and the spreading vine and budding pomegranate— “Or ever I was aware.”—Watching the workings of the Holy Spirit, so silent, persistent, mighty. As irresistible as the tiny seedling forcing aside huge granite blocks by insidious growth, as the Hanover cemetery, laughing at man’s proud strength against God’s weakness. “My soul made me like the chariots of Ammi-nadib.”
We can say, “My soul, refreshed and strengthened by His principle of life out of death, songs born of tears, victory through defeat, suddenly soars up with eagle wings and speeds as the rolling chariot formed for incessant speed and triumphant passing—the chariot which bears often one conquering heart alone, which bounds exultingly to the high unerring flight of the warrior steed. My soul makes me like that winged vessel, unchecked by things around, unstayed by sight or sound of earth-bound sense, and bears me on to the heights reached long ago by His bleeding feet, and made ours in the bowing of His thorn-crowned head—the heights of glory and the power of His resurrection.” But this is the Lord speaking. He calls her fair. He calls her terrible. He knows her power and her beauty, in and of Himself alone, and He watches the travail of His soul, and the result of His boundless patience, and He is set on the chariot of His willing ones. He shall come as borne on the longing spirits of His own, who cry daily, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Why tarry the wheels of Thy chariot? (Ps. 110:3.) Return! Return! that we may look upon Thee, Thou Prince of Peace—Thou Lamb of God—our sometimes weary eyes long to look upon Thy glorious Face—long to see Thee as Thou art, and to understand Thee fully—to be able to read the glories of Thy grace—the consuming power and the unquenchable love, the eternal majesty and the unfathomable tenderness. Come, come, Lord Jesus, come. Ammi-nadib was the son of Ram, of the tribe of Judah, who begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah (1 Chron. 2:10), from whom descended Boaz, Jesse, David, ancestors of our Lord. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Son of David. One day the slow hearts of His own, the Israelites will be willing, and cry out to their long-slighted Messiah, “Hosanna in the highest.”
And our souls often cry in weakness, “Return, return, thou Shulamite,” to those whose spirits shone out the radiance of Christ, who dwelt in His presence, as Moses in the mount, until the light was too strong for the plain below. “Return, thou soul made radiant in communion; come back to weary eyes that have not yet learned to look off only unto Jesus; return from the height to the valley of sin and travail and groan.” The world can often see what it cannot understand, and Christians often understand the power they do not possess. “Though one rose from the dead,” He said, “yet would they not believe.” But although saint or sinner reject, He shines intrinsically for His own glory, either through the humblest believer or through His wondrous ways: “A savor of God, even in things that perish.”
“What will ye see in the Shulamite?” “Two armies. Two hosts.” What will ye see in that lowly Man who trod year after year those quiet slopes of Nazareth unnoticed and unknown, save by angel eyes, and the few loving ones whose gaze was more of wonderment than knowledge?
The twofold mystery—Godhead clad in manhood, bringing heaven down to earth, and lifting earth up to heaven. “He grasped not at the nature of angels.” (German rendering). He wanted the Church “bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh.” He would go down into the bowels of the mine for the hidden gem, and lift it to the glory which He forsook for her. And when He comes the two hosts will shine out His surpassing radiance. What vast depths of His intrinsic worth and beauty will unfold and reveal, and tell of still greater depths beyond; and, wondrous thought! shine out in the sleeping who will appear with Him, and the waking caught up to Him. Doubtless the sleeping are only sleeping to us now, and the spirit enjoys greater fullness of His joy than we, pent in and fretted by the body, imprisoned so much to sight and sense. They can breathe freely the richness of the heavenly life.
Two hosts—earth and heaven—redeemed from every tongue and kindred and nation, and thousands and thousands of angelic hosts, stainless and unredeemable, because never fallen from their matchless heights. And now two hosts—angels and demons—God and man—two antagonistic armies, mighty and strong, yet all and in all magnifying His glory. We make too often our life a gloom, and cry: we are watching with Him “one hour”; but He, for the “joy set before Him, endured... despising the shame.” “Bear the sin of the whole world,” cried Satan in that “one hour.” “Thou glorious, spotless, sin-hating Jesus; take the black load that man does not even feel, so loathsome and dark and filthy is he in the flesh; steep Thy pure, stainless spirit in that dark hell, whose night of iniquity wraps him round like a welcomed cloak, and face alone the sinner’s distance from Thine own sphere of reachless light, the glory of His almighty presence, in which Thou hast basked, one with it.”
We have no Gethsemanes. We call our little pits and ruts by great names, and in all our real sorrows and trials find Him in circling light ever at our side. It is a privilege to suffer for Him, or with Him, in our little measure; and those who know Him best are ever, as Paul—dungeon-stricken, forsaken, and facing alone the prospect of cruel death— “rejoicing in the Lord.” Oh, what are we here for? To cherish whole skins and enjoy His love for ourselves—the love without the responsibility, the knowledge without the servant’s labor of spreading it, the soldier’s armor without the actual fight for souls? Take care we are not dying of shirking the enemy until we find no corner small enough to hold us, instead of flooding starving lands with the fuller knowledge entrusted to us—the whole of the grace and the glory revealed to us—the mighty truth that souls are craving after in this day of creeping darkness and error, and we become as salt without savor, and withered branches ready to be cast forth.
“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.”
No lack of spring, no flagging footsteps. The walk as a triumphant march, the feet as “hinds’ feet,” and the seat of strength perfect. “That wicked one toucheth him not” is a promise. No set joints dry and marrowless from contact with earth-marshes and self-swamps. Shod by Him, she reflects His footsteps along unbroken ground, the daughter of the heavenly one, all glorious within, comely in His fairness, clad in wrought gold. As with the sacrifice of the offerings all the inwards were for the Lord, so the Church, pure in His purity with “every thought brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,” shines out His glory, and is changed from glory to glory even now. How many have read His pitying love in her eyes— eyes that have looked with His love on the sin-stained and the suffering and the crushed? How many have seen the face set steadfastly as His towards the golden city, and found strength in the radiance of His light, to rise and call Him blessed? Her head like Carmel, crimson with His lovely handiwork, reflecting the rose of Sharon, lifted up to the home where He is exalted above all heavens and earth and worlds around. How fair to Him His representation on earth, her heart ever towards His face; fruitful and strong as the palm in sunshine lands, which spreads its feathery branches into the changing air untouched by either heat or cold, and drooping its golden clusters of fruit around the stem till they shine like some gold coronet in the sunny air. Not only were her accents like “best wine”—the best wine of Capernaum was what He created—but the lips of those that are asleep are opened, and the praise that glorifies Him springs forth, and the prayer which is His delight rises to His heart.
And His realization that she is His, understood and delighted in, sends her forth to the fields. “The laborers are few,” said our Lord. Alas! that He should have to say it. “Few,” and thy need is so vast and appalling that even to look at it makes the heart tremble. “Few,” and thousands in different parts of the world would gladly lift their starving hearts to quaff the tiniest cup of the living water. “Few,” and the blessed heart of Christ is still crying, “Go ye out.” Fields unsown, wide and wealthy, fields rank with weeds and miasma marshes of infidelity and spiritism and idolatry. Fields sown and fair, with none to tend or pluck the ripening grain—none to watch or water. Oh! what glorious work lies before the feeblest child of God; what rapturous sense of His favor in doing what one “could.” What echoes of “Well done” for the faintest heart if “faithful in that which is least.”
Not only “go forth to the fields,” but “lodge in the villages.” Not only to see, but to do. Our life is only half a life—half lived—unless spent entirely for Him.
“Let us get up early to the vineyards.”
Abraham, Joshua, the prophets, the Lord Himself, all rose early. (Jer. 35:14.) “At the dawn” the word means.
To obey at the dawn. Directly we are sent, to run. To let no “ifs” and “buts” come between the telling and the deed. Not to wait for others to wake up and discuss it with us, but, like Paul, “conferring not with flesh and blood” where “Thou” and “me” are concerned. (Gal. 1:16.) O young Christians! give the Lord the early days. When love is at white-heat, when your whole soul is filled and overwhelmed with the first sight of His matchless love and His worth—with Him—act on the first love, and it will continue and deepen, and lay hold of wondrous riches unthought of by you. Early, while faith sees only Jesus, and has not been discouraged or dampened by the way.
If the children of Israel had not listened to the story of the “giants,” and had gone in “early,” the long forty years would have been spared. “They could not enter in because of unbelief”; and so, missing the early, they were too late, and never went in at all—only Joshua and Caleb, who were at the freshness of dawn after the forty years, as before. Oh! for David’s eager spirit, not only seeking Him “right early,” but swift to obey (1 Sam. 17:20) his father’s commands; and for Samuel’s faithful heart (1 Sam. 15:12), even if the errand is not one congenial to the mind, or for triumph as a savor of His footsteps. Tell Him out before the soul is jaded or harassed by the way, before the freshness of first joy and the buoyancy of first love pass or pale, or you get “experienced Christians.” Give Him the alabaster box, though any, or all, cry, “Why this waste?” Mary was early at the sepulcher, and she met a risen Lord, and had the joy of telling others, “He is risen; He is not here.” And you shall keep your youth. It shall be renewed as the eagle’s. You shall not be weary, nor flag, nor faint. The manna lay on the dew, and the dew and the manna were just as fresh after ten years as the first morning of its fall, and as fresh after twenty as ten. The manna was just the same; but they had learned to gather it, and learned to appreciate it. “Jesus, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” Your soul will get fresher and fresher, faith more buoyant, love more triumphant, if you never miss Him by the way.
“Garments fresh and foot unweary
Tell how God hath brought thee through.”
And we do not “go early” for nothing. There are the tender grapes, the pomegranates budding, the vine flourishing. Thousands of precious things that the late heart never sees nor dreams of. Pleasant fruits, new and old, “laid up” like His great goodness to others (Ps. 31:19), and of which He says to each,” I have laid up for thee.” His ways, His secrets, His surprises, His whispers, His white stone and hidden manna even now. All that John learned and received, as he leaned on that wondrous breast and felt the beatings of the heart that broke for the sin of the world, is ours.
Pleasant fruits stored up in the eternity past, when the “counsel of peace was between them both,” and purposes to lay them at the gates of feeble man, who is man raised from such a depth to such a height to be crowned with heaven’s choicest gifts! but, oh! what fitting for the gift; what work and sore travail before the vessel can shine out one ray of light—one reflection of His boundless worth.
But it must be “us.” Only with Him; only by the Holy Spirit. We might know the whole Bible by heart, and be able to recount God’s wonderful ways with His children, and yet be “barren” souls; alone, unfed, and with nothing but husks for others. Only by the Holy Spirit can the “pleasant fruits” be enjoyed, and when “led of the Spirit” every step of the way and the day, that we can “go in and out, and find pasture.”
“Oh! that Thou wert as my brother.”
The longing for nearness! Who does not know it? To see Him always as we have seen Him at times, almost eye to eye and face to face. To realize Him at our side with “nothing between,” with His beauty filling the whole soul, and the light of His wondrous presence wrapping us round until all of earth or nature has sunken to dross, and we have been all but in heaven.
But the craving here is of one who had found Him and lost Him; lost Him and found Him. We are united to a risen Jesus; part of Himself in the glory. It is only when the Holy Spirit is grieved or quenched that we do not realize it; it affects our joy and our power, but we are still members of “His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.”
Aye! and if we knew the power of this, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” we should be as giants in the land. By the Spirit joined to the Lord in glory—the triumphant Jesus—indwelt by the same Holy Spirit, dwelling in Him, is nothing of our doing, only by the Spirit, and our part to enter into it and enjoy it. We are “mighty men” through this; but we often cry, “Our leanness, our leanness,” instead of, “When I am weak, then am I strong,” and, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Do we so wholly surrender ourselves that He can do just as He will with us, turning us as the pilot turns the ship whithersoever he will? Then should we cause Him to drink of the “spiced wine and the juice of the pomegranate”; then would many marvel at His strength, and the scenes of the early Pentecostal days be enacted over again. It is nothing to Him “to save,” whether “by many or by few.”
We grieve naturally and rightly over a “broken testimony” and “a scattered Church,” but do we at the same time see the Holy Spirit unchanged and unweakened, able and willing to act through feeble vessels, and working as the Lord said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work... and He will show Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel!”? (John 5:17-20.) There are no degrees of His power. His perpetual work on earth has not lessened; His power remains which shook Jerusalem as He descended from heaven —the sent One, as was the Lord. Nay! but the channels are blocked. The vessels are choked and dusty and begrimed, which should be “sanctified and meet for the Master’s use”; and surely the crying weakness of the Church of God as a whole in the present day is through not giving the Holy Spirit His place individually and collectively, and clouding His power and glory, which is as undimmed as it was through all the ages. He could come upon Saul and work mightily, so that they said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” But He is in us, and “God giveth not the Spirit by measure,” for “He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” (John 14:17.) Then should He be able in a measure—as much as we could bear—to give us of the hidden manna and the white stone, even now, with the new name; and day by day to reveal secrets of His own as He holds us close to His heart of wealth: the same heart that leaped to the tears of the widowed and desolate as she passed out from the city whose name signified “Pleasant,” to return, as she thought, alone, until she, too, should be carried outside the gate. Not another, not gone, not changed, nor passed into the radiance to forget or to look casually upon our toiling footsteps that so feebly follow on, but steeped with our needs and our cares; pierced through and through with our sorrows and our prayers; crying still, “A mother may forget, yet will not I.” That “same Jesus—yesterday—forever.”
“His left hand and His right.”
Plucked from Satan’s power—kept and carried. Kept as the apple of His eye, and “carried even to hoar hairs.”
Joseph could tell of the keeping, and Jacob could, in his minor key, breathe of the carrying. David could sing of the keeping, and John of Patmos could tell of the carrying, borne in His arms even into the splendor of the Eternal City. It has no limit, either the holding or the carrying. Enoch knew it for many long years. Abraham and Moses tell of no little journey; and, if we could measure hundreds of years, His arms would still enfold us and their strength sustain. Never to lessen His hold; never to weary of the clasp; the love never to cool and the power never to dim. And it is well that “His left hand should be under our head.” It is well that He should control and hold our intellect as well as our affections.
The head without the heart has wrought much havoc, and the “simplicity which is in Christ” been changed into disastrous speculations and unsanctified thoughts. We “see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor,” not by the intellect, but by the Spirit-filled heart; and woe to us when we gaze upon Him by the eye of reason and understanding, instead of as the heart of John, who “fell at His feet as one dead.”
“Why should ye stir up, or why should ye awake my love, until she please?” she cries to the daughters of Jerusalem.
Why must the world, or the half-hearted Christian, drag us away from the close communion, from being “covered all the day long”? Why must the flesh in us draw another from His side? We do not mean it, but we do it. That visit, unsent by Him, to talk over a grievance or chatter over our thoughts of others, has given a pull away from His side, perchance, to one of the hearts of His little ones; and no word of prayer at the close sent them back to His feet to shake off the defiling dust which we had scattered so amply over their white robe. To be led of the Spirit, not alone for our own joy, but that we may be harmless toward one another. The kindly interference of the natural mind that made it difficult for the true soul to carry out His instructions only—that unwitting frustrating of His plans. Oh! let us cry to Him to keep us from “stirring up” each other, except in the Spirit, as bidden by Him. We are told to “provoke one another to love and to good works”; but that can go with the precious rest of a heart enclosed in His. Martha sought to “stir up” Mary, but the Lord stepped in. And we should help to place each other in His arms by abiding ourselves, and praying with and for each other, rather than for one moment check or break the calm communion of a soul that has hungered and thirsted after Him for long, and now finds the everlasting arms are round about and underneath. We might “smite” as the “watchmen,” or disturb as the “daughters of Jerusalem,” if we are not in the “secret place” ourselves; and it is a solemn thought that we do each other more harm than anything if we deal with each other in the flesh, or according to our natural thoughts. We should be springs of “living water” for each other, refreshing our weary spirits from each other’s full cup; the heart so “lodged in goodness” (Ps. 25:13, margin) that sitting at His feet we can tell out what He has taught and told us, not only what we have learned from others. Joseph learned it in the pit and in the loneliness of Egypt; Moses in the heart-burnings of Pharaoh’s court and the mountain separation; David in the hiding-cave and the desolations of Saul’s persistent hatred. Each and all have learned the heart of God alone with God, and to each He has spoken things He never will to another, and led by secret paths that another’s foot will never know; and yet each will enhance the other’s joy and glory which would not be complete were any member of His body not without “spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”
“Cometh up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved.”
It is up. Every step should be higher and nearer. “The path of the just is as the shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.” We prove His promises—yea and amen—day by day, as we tread on and up; and as we know Him better and attain more to the “full, stature,” the shadows of earth grow less, and we see all things more from His height in glory. But it is only, leaning that we learn Him. Not only at His side but leaning upon Him. John’s Gospel is full of what he learned as he leaned on “Jesus’ bosom,” and his Epistles with the beating of Christ’s own heart.
“Oh! what is my-Beloved?
They oft inquire of;
And what in my Beloved
So passing fair I see?
Oh! no, ‘tis not His glories—
He’s worthy of them all;
‘Tis not the throne and scepter
Before which angels fall.”
It is just Himself in all His unspeakable beauty; and we learn something of it where and how John did. Adam’ could hide from Him in the confusion of sin’s disobedience; but He rested not till the son of ‘Adam’ could lay a human head upon His breast in the form—not of an angel, for that were distance—but in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, the so-called carpenter’s son. To throw our whole being, mind and heart and self, upon Him. To cast ourselves with all the thousand surging needs of life, and all the conflicts of our spiritual walk; with all the countless needs of others measured against the weakness that cries, “What are they amongst so many?” wafted over the myriads of unsaved and weary, thirsty Souls. To cast ourselves and all this upon His beating heart, and let Him carry us and them through the wilderness path. Shall we learn no secrets there? Shall we only give burdens and sorrows as we lean? Ah, no! We gain that which makes us bless the burdens and the cares and the conflicts, though it was not these that brought John and Mary so close: it was the utter enjoyment of His presence—the love that burned in their hearts for Him. We glory that it is the wilderness which proves to us what the power of Him who trod every step of its trackless dreariness, and who, as our great High Priest, gives us the “streams in the desert,” until we “cry aloud and sing for the fullness of His filling and His love.”
“Set me as a seal upon Thine heart, as a seal upon Thine arm.”
An echo of His own blessed assurance, “I have graven thee upon the palms of Mine hands”; for He exclaims, “Can a mother forget? Yea, she may, yet will not I.”
“Upon Thine heart.” “Because it was in thine heart,” said God to David—the center of life’s affections, the mainspring of all actions, the fountain of love. The breastplate was over the heart of the great High Priest, sparkling and weighted with all the jewels which represented those so loved and so patiently succored by the God of Israel. But the breastplate could be removed—put on and off. The heathen work is often through pain and burning the names and images of various persons or things; and often the breast and arms, and even the faces, are covered with signs that can never be effaced until the body has lost identity in dust. But the seal on His heart can never be lost. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” The word is the same that applies to Himself— “the Everlasting Father.” The spear passed into His side as He hung, the Lamb of God slain; and although it was Satan’s spear thrust in by man’s malice and hatred, yet it was God’s seal to the love that was stronger than death; and in heaven that seal daily shines as a proof of the depth and length and breadth of it to us, and links us with Himself in the thoughts of God and of His heavenly host; and that cry of desire to be stamped into His heart and entwined with His strength has been answered far above all thought, as only God and Christ could answer it. That seal has been set— and the Jews shall “look upon Him whom they have pierced,” and understand all that the wondrous sealing tells. How their name was on God’s arm stretched forth over Egypt, and lifted to part the boundless waters, and raised to cover them through all the long years’ wanderings of unbelief and rebellion. But we look now and see Jesus crowned with glory and honor; we gaze on a risen Christ; and in the strife of love and death we see love triumphant and death stingless.
“For love is strong as death”: but looking there we cry, “Stronger.” And death is strong.
We bow before it as we pass along, owning its iron strength as our tears fall on each pale face. Age by age the wealth of nations, and the hard-won science, and the might of giant intellects, have confessed they are but straws in the wind before its icy blast. But we have passed Calvary and looked into an empty sepulcher, have heard His voice which cried, “It is finished” —and was still—say, “I ascend unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God.” Whether it was the wail of the mothers over the firstborn—of Eve over Abel—or of David over Absalom, all have paid their tribute to the strength of that death which came through sin; but love has engulfed it, and Christ risen has the keys of death and of Hades; and there is glory and joy in passing through its barriers to His own presence to go out no more.
And if death is strong, “jealousy is as cruel as the grave” —hard as the dark, cold, bare earth that gives no light, nor warmth, nor nurture to the form laid therein.
Satan’s jealousy blasted in Eden God’s fair work; it was the root of all his lies and murder which culminated at the cross.
It seared Cain’s hand with blood; it blotted Sarai’s white robe; it put Joseph in the pit, and brake Jacob’s heart; it made the brother and sister speak against Moses, and later, the brethren of David taunt his true heart with unworthy motives; and it circled round Christ’s whole life and delivered Him—as Pilate knew (Matt. 27:18)—to the cruel death of Calvary. “Who is able to stand before envy?” cried the wise man. (Prov. 27:4.) And, alas! Paul had to tell of it after the Holy Spirit had been given, fearing lest he should find it (2 Cor. 12:20), and warning against it (Gal. 5:26); and even seeing that some preached Christ of envy and strife. But in true love there is none. “Charity envieth not,” for “she seeketh not her own.” Where there is no self-seeking there is no jealousy; and He who alone fulfilled that precious 1 Cor. 15. sought not His own but the Father’s glory from the first step to the last. And the fire still burns. “The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”
The coals come from our own hearts day by day, and burn up much that is fair and precious in His eyes, scorching the fragrance out of our own hearts, and marring each other’s ministry and fruitfulness. Let us judge our motives, sifting them before His eyes, that our spirits keep clear and clean and cool from this disastrous, devouring fire; and there is room for more of His own love—which “the waves could not quench, nor the floods drown” —to flood our hearts and lives. It is only this love will quench all jealousy—this mighty love that fills heaven with wonder, and surges over the very lowest and vilest of earth’s creatures; this love so great that none but the heart of God could possess or hold it—and could we weigh it against the dominions and crowns of the world, it would leave them all as barren baubles— worthless and contemned for the glory and the worth of one thought of His love toward us. And makes us cry, “We love Him because He first loved us.”
And it leads us to think of others.
There are many “little sisters.”
God speaks to Israel of her sister Samaria in Ezekiel 23:32, 33 and in Hosea 13: “Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God.”
Now Israel, as a whole, has rebelled, and we might use the same language to her. And if it applies to others, who have less of His knowledge or Himself, oh! to have the heart of Paul toward such: “For I could pray that myself were separated from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” The same spirit that made Moses cry, “Blot me out, I pray” —that soul-yearning that others might be blessed which is of His own Spirit, who could visit the darkest abyss, that we might have the light of life.
This is the spirit of “If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.” The love that covereth. Oh! to spend our days and prayers and knowledge upon the needy, and those who have not. Not to criticize, or judge, or go over and over again the things we know, but to go into “the highways and hedges,” to bring the “lame and the blind and the poor to our feast of spiritual things, to share the least crumb of blessing with those who hunger and thirst to know these things,” and, with a happy heart, to “do them.” We long to be as fed ones feeding others; not forcing food into full mouths, but carrying it to those “afar off,” to those whose hearts have never leaped to the sound of His blessed voice, who have never heard His call, “Come unto Me,” but who stumble on—dark and cold and dreary—knowing not of the “light of the world” at hand to flood their lives and hearts; to be as strong ones lifting up the fallen and the crushed, till each of our hands shall not be able to carry or bind the full sheaves that will gild the way for the Master’s feet. He has “spoken for” many; but, oh! to us is so often the precious privilege of making them fair and beautiful for His eyes, ready for the spotless garment and crown of life. The wondrous truth that “He has sent us, even as the Father sent Him.” He in us, acting out the longings of His own heart, and drawing through such feeble hands the souls enclosed by the “cords of love.”
“Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon” —the place of a multitude— “He let out the vineyard unto keepers.”
The vineyard is large. Not only Israel even then. And the Lord let it out afresh when He said, “Occupy till I come.” First, “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 21), and then for “my brother’s keeper”; not to writhe under this tension, and make a burden and strain of the responsibility, but to “walk in the light,” to “abide in Him” in perfect freedom and perfect joy, and then to ask “what” we “will”—our brother’s growth and strength and blessing—and it “shall be done.” The vineyard needs tender hands, and watchful, prayerful eyes. “Here a little, and there a little,” till the grapes are ripe; and then the work is not finished. Keepers have no time to sleep, no time to browse. “Every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.” “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.” Even a child can be a keeper in a measure. Look at Manasseh—began to reign at twelve years of age. What was the fruit of his keeping? “Built again the high places which Hezekiah, his father, had broken down” —altar for Baalim; served and worshipped the host of heaven. And even in the house of the Lord “he built altars for all the host of heaven”; set a carved image—the idol which he had made—in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen before all tribes of Israel, will I put My name forever.” (2 Chron. 33:5-7.) Are there none such to-day? Are there no images set up where His name has professedly been placed? Are there no altars reared to the host of heaven by those who should be keepers, bringing a thousand of silver to His feet? Alas! yes. But “His vineyard, which is His, is before Him.” His eyes are over His own, and He knows how to “separate the precious from the vile.” We should either sweep all away as refuse, or cherish what He must burn. It is a great responsibility to be a child of God, but no “keeper” need faint nor be discouraged. He says, “My vineyard, which is Mine, is before Me.” It is His, every handful of the soil, every twig of the vines, every cluster of the fruit—all His. He can guard and care for His own. He who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand can keep the tender plants from bruising, and nurture the fair vines in spite of wind and storm; only let us be faithful— “faithful in that which is least,” remembering it is His, and leaning restfully on Him while we “buy up the opportunities,” and are fervent in spirit, “always abounding in the work of the Lord.” “He must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.” He shall be glorified. Not one glow of His glory shall be missing; not one ray of perfection in His finished work shall fail to circle His brow. All shall be His, and we shall get our portion in His— “Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” Two hundred. Two-tenths of a double tithe. We shall have crowns and jewels to lay at His feet. We shall have wondrous secrets of union with Himself. We shall each know His heart as it beats for us alone, and share His glory while He gives us a part of it for our very own. “Benjamin’s mess was five times as large as any of theirs.” God’s “well-beloved Son,” in whom is all His delight, how can we measure the portion which shall be His when He shall “see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied”? But we shall have part in it—as the pearl He won—to shine in the Father’s house, His glory and His grace.
And if He dwells now in the gardens and the vineyards and the terraces of earth’s spiritual plantations, we only need to hear the voice for the fruit to spring and ripen, and the tender plants to thrive. “Trees of the Lord’s planting, that He may be glorified.”
His voice caused the earth to yield her fruits, and spoke Nature into order and beauty. His voice woke Adam’s conscience, and proved to Cain his guilt. It lifted Hagar’s fainting spirit, and started Moses on his difficult task; it strengthened Daniel, and startled Saul from the glory; and in the garden it hushed Mary’s heart almost to stillness as it drooped in the darkness and loss. And in the mount, that moment which would have made up to them for ages of suffering, when they saw His face “shining as the sun,” and beheld His glory, they heard God’s voice telling His estimate of Him whom earth despised and rejected. And today it is an actual thing, as real to us as it was to them. By His word and by His Spirit He speaks daily to us, if we are near enough and hushed enough—from self and the things of earth—to hear it.
“Cause me to hear it.” Often by wrenches from tendrils and twinings; often by loss and bitterness; often through need and sorrow, He answers this, and causes us to hear the living, tender whispers which become dearer to us than life itself.
And as we hear it we cry, “Make haste, my Beloved, and be Thou like to a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.”
The roebuck or deer was noted for its swiftness and its beauty, and the hart had many characteristics. Napthali was a hind let loose. It would scale the rocky heights with perfect ease, having feet formed for this; and when the Lord tells us that the “lame shall leap as an hart,” it is no mere power to walk, but the buoyant spring that finds no obstacle in the rugged rocks and boulders of the highest mountaintops.
And “the mountains of spices.”
Is there no fragrance to Him in those heights where He longs to have His bride, whom He stooped so low to win, with Him? Are not the whole steeps from heaven to earth “mountains of spices”? Are there not countless prayers and praises rising perpetually through the wondrous space from our hearts to His, longing desires for His glory—outburst for the soul’s deep love for Him, and appreciation of Himself— piling up golden heights over which His heart can bound as He waits His love to give the call which means such rapturous light to us, and such blackness to the world? On many a hard pallet, from tossing and weary frames, rises melody to His spirit as deep as when He “rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” Many a poor hunted, persecuted heart, scorned and buffeted, is “strong in faith, glorifying God,” and rejoicing in Him who is so worthy of trust.
John gave a feeble echo of His heart when he said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Not in certain lines and head-knowledge of doctrine, but in Himself the Truth and the Life, for those that will to do His will shall know of the doctrine. He thirsted at the well, and the cry of the lost sheep— “Is not this the Christ?” —refreshed His longing, seeking heart. Does He thirst less in the glory for those cries of longing and streams of praise? Surely not. The risen Jesus is as much the Seeker as when He tested the faith of the Syrophenician woman by saying, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And as He knows now what is in man as then, so when there rises from among the pollution of Satan and the rebellion of man aught of His own Holy Spirit, He—who drank of “the brook in the way and lifted up His head”—glories in His own before all the mighty, radiant host of heaven. And oh! as we groan over the wilderness, and its clouds and shadows and rough bits, do we realize that but for them the spices would not “flow out,” and though He would still leap over the mountains, like the young hart, for His longing to come, there could be no spices for His blessed footsteps, no odors of filled hearts to gladden His. So let us “rejoice alway,” and in our joy and longing cry unceasingly, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.”
Midst the darkness, storm, and sorrow
One bright gleam I see;
Well I know the blessed morrow,
Christ will come for me.
Midst the light, and peace, and glory
Of the Father’s home,
Christ for me is watching, waiting,
Waiting till I come.
Oh! the blessed joy of meeting,
All the desert past!
Oh! the wondrous words of greeting
He shall speak at last!
He and I, together ent’ring
Those bright courts above;
He and I, together sharing
All the Father’s love.
He, who in His hour of sorrow
Bore the curse alone;
I, who thro’ the lonely desert
Trod where He had gone;
He and I, in that bright glory,
One deep joy shall share—
Mine, to be forever with Him;
His, that I am there.