Among all the delights how fair And how passing pleasant is love.
Even Shakespeare's miraculous fabric of Sonnets and Plays, resplendent with a thousand lights on human thought and feeling, gives no indication of the higher teaching of the Canticle. With the exception of Dante, the Brownings, and a few others, poets in the Christian era have seldom expressed appreciation of the immediate presence of God in all true love betw.een man and woman, and of the lofty ethic to which this faith gives birth.^
2. If the heart be opened to that mightiest of mighty motives, the love of God, then there is a new force in human life, powerful enough to withstand many an onslaught of the fiercest temptation. Love, after all, is a personal matter. We never really love things ; persons alone we love. We can stand and withstand ; we can work and suffer, and even die, if the stimulus for action or the stimulus for endurance comes from a great love ; and in the mystic arena of the spiritual life, where battles the severest and most deadly are fought out to severe conclusions, if strength be a duty, if we are to do with our might that which indeed we find to do, then, let us remember, no effort is foolish or futile which is made to throw open our understanding, our heart, or our will, to that mighty energy, " the love of God."
Since penalties so fearful
Thou didst to sin award. How can our heart be cheerful,
How can we love Thee, Lord ? Because Thou still art gracious.
Lord, even in Thine ire, Eound blissful Heaven spacious
It is protective fire. * H. Falconer, TJie Maid of Shulam, 107.
SONG OF SONGS viii. 6, 7 479
Fear makes our souls the fitter
To prize Thy love and Thee ; For if the curse be bitter
Sweet must the blessing be; Oh, sweet to hear Thee saying,
Peace, heart, be ever still; Oh ! sweet the full obeying
Of Thine eternal will.
To Thee our heart is crying
Amid deceiving sin. And worldly fears defying
The faith that rules within. We from estranging error
Our love to Thee would guard; To us the chiefest terror
Is lest we lose Thee, Lord.
IV.
The Unquenchableness of Love.
"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."
This represents the Divine principle of love as triumphing by its inherent might over all the forces that oppose or may oppose it. Fire is the symbol of love, and therefore its antagonistic element, water, is used to set forth the powers that are hostile to love, but which must in the end be overcome by it. You can extinguish flame with water, if only you can pour on a sufficient quantity ; but this flame of love no amount of coldness or opposi- tion will cool in the least degree. Let Satan and his legions do their very utmost to lessen the intensity of this heavenly flame, their labour is vain. They only prepare for themselves a bitter disappointment. Or let the floods of human vice and human antagonism rise as they may, they can never rise as high as this heavenly flame. The finite can never overmaster the Infinite. The love of God to men is a sacred principle, an integral part of the Divine nature. There is nothing outside God to be compared in potency with what is within Him. As the creature can never be a match for the Creator, so no kind of opposition can ever
48o IN PRAISE OF LOVE
injure or diminish the eternal love of God. Just as nothing on earth or in hell can diminish God's power or tarnish His righteousness, so also nothing can lessen or dim the fervent flame of His eternal pity. "Many waters cannot quench love"; yea, love turns all human hatred into fresh coals to feed the flame.
^ Do we not read in the Pilgrim's Progress how the enemy was seeking to extinguish the fire by pouring on pails of water ; it became a matter of astonishment how the fire continued to burn, even with greater vehemence. But the Interpreter explained the secret, seeing that from behind the scene there was another hand pouring oil upon the flame. So it is with the Bride of Christ. There is much to discourage her. There is much to cool her ardour. There are many who would drown her love if they could, but, thanks be unto God, it lives on. She survives all the opposition of the enemy, and she will yet be more than conqueror through Him that loved her.^
V.
The Unpurchasable Sanctity of Love.
" If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, he would utterly be contemned."
1. The thought of this final distich is the sacredness of love. It is not a commodity to be bought or sold in the market ; no money can purchase an affection so priceless, because so holy and Divine.
One reading of this passage is, " If a man would give all the substance of his house instead of love, he would be utterly con- temned." The Lord does not want our gold. The gold and the silver are His. He wants ourselves ; and if He gets us, our two mites or our two millions will soon go into His treasury. There appears to be a great lack of means for missionaries and others at the present time. The question is often asked, " Why is it so ? " Various answers are given, but the true answer is the lack of that consuming love which will place our all at the feet of Him who sold all that He had that He might win us to Himself. If we give our substance, vainly thinking the Lord will accept of us because of our offering, it is a gross mistake. He wants not ours, but us.