The Pulpit Commentary — Song of Songs — Section 63

compares all other daughters with her, and classes them all with the thorns as compared with her. If whatsoever be not of faith be sin, then, whatsoever it be, it comes under this ill-sounding name of" thorns." Such are the surroundings of the saintly soul. II. NEVllRTHELEBS, THEY GROW THERE, As a fact, they do and increase. And the reason is that given to Paul when he "besought the Lord thrice" concerning his thorn : "My grace is sufficient for thee: .. , my strength is made perfect in weakness." There is no other account to be given of ·the matter. It is all a marvel but for that. IIJ, AND IT IS IN HIS GRACE AND WISDOM THAT THEY ARE WHERE THEY ARE, How many wise and holy ends aro secured by it! 1. God's grace is magnified in and by them. It is easy to grow amid favourable surroundings, where much helps and but little hinders. Growth there is not remarkable. 'l'o be Christ's servants where such service is general, and even popular, is no hardship. But if amid thorns, amid all that hinders, all that makes it difficult to serve Christ, if there we serve him, then is bis grace magnified. 2. The world is kept from being hell. From being all thorns, dry, barren, hurtful, fit only for the fire. What would this world be if God's saints were taken out of it? Life would, indeed, then be not worth living. It would be better had men never been born. 3. '1.'he thorns may be led to become Ulies. Of course, this is impossible in the natural world, but, thank God, not in the spiritual. And such trans- formation often occurs, and that it may, God places his lilies where they are. "As the Father bath sent me, so send I you," he said to bis disciples. But the Father sent the Son to save the world. This, therefore, in their measure is the mission of bis people, and hence they must be where they are. • IV. BuT IT WILL NOT BE so ALWAYS. The lilies shall be transplanted that they may bloom for ever in the Paradise of God. And the thorns I-what is fit for such will be done. Therefore if we be of the blessed number whom the lilies of the valleys repre- sent, let us not murmur, but reme91ber what our mission is, and seek to fulfil it. And let each one of us ask-Which am I, lily or thorn ?-S. C. Ver. 3.-'-" His shadow." St. Bernard takes this as telling of the Passion of Christ, and especially of the time when, as he hung on the cross, there was "darkness over all the land." Now, it does not mean this, but rather, as the whole context of the verse tells, of the cool shelter from the sun's fierce heat and glare which the speaker enjoyed beneath the o'erarching of the boughs of the tree under which she bad seated herself. Hence it tells of "the shadow _6f the Almighty," of which Ps. xci so fully speaks. Therefore let us take this- - I. ITS TRUE MEANING, "Man is born to trouble;" he needs shelter continually. The sun smites him by day; the fierce heat of life's cares and distresses often make him faiut and weary. Now: 1. There are other shelters which men often choose. The world offers many. (1) Its riches. Men think, if they can only get these, they will be protected from all harm, both they and theirs. Hence men struggle after them incessantly. (2) Its friends. If we can gather round us a sufficient number of these, and of the right kind, we sit down under that shadow with great delight. (3) Its pleasures also. Men plunge into them as into some leafy covert, where they can hide themselves from the darts of all kinds of pursuing pains. But are not all these what the prophet calls "walls daubed with untempered mortar;" or, as in another place another prophet speaks, "battlements" which are "not the Lord's"? 2. But what harm they do us I They are short-lived, and when our sorest need comes these Jonah-gourds have all withered. And at the best they are but imperfect. They can for a while affect our circumstances, but the soul, the true seat of all trouble, they cannot better, but only make worse. For they do us this wrong also-they come between us and man'~ only true Shelter, "the shadow of the Almighty." They binder our seeing and our seeking it, and then, sooner or later, do assuredly fail us themselves. Under the image of "cisterns, broken cisterns, which can bold no water," and for the sake of which men in their folly forsake the fountain of living waters, Jeremiah mourns the same infatuation. 5. But the Lord is alone man's true Defence. The failure of others, the unvaried pro- tection that this affords, is proof incontestable. This blessod shadow, whilst Israel rested in it sheltered them from all evil; and it does so still for every one that" dwelleth in the secr~t place of the Most High "-every one, that is, who abides in the trust of him of whom the secret plr\co told. 'l'bat secret place was the inner chamber in the  52 THE SONG OF SOLOMON. [ou. n.1-17.