The Pulpit Commentary — Song of Songs — Section 71

'l'bey aro as the wild boar out of the wood and the beasts of the field, told of in the psalm we quoted just now. High-banded, bold, Heaven-defying sins, bringing down on the doers of them, sooner or later, the dread judgments of God. But there are other masteia of the soul, spoilers of the grapes of God,-those sins which here are pictured to us as "the little foxes." "Little," so we call them, and others call them so too; and hence, though wo bo all wrong together in so calling them, we have come to think them little as well as call them so. And/ox-like, which we often forget, for they skulk and lurk and hide; they have, as our Lord said, "their holes," and there they burrow and bury themselves out of sight. And many of them have other characteristics of the fox-deceit, cruelty, foulness; true vermin of the soul are they. And they all of them often feign death as the fox does. And we think them dead, and lo! they spring to life ngain, and are as active as ever. Hence we do indeed need to be on our guard against them. But it is the littleness of these sins to which our thoughts are chiefly turned by the vivid image of the little foxes. Their littleness, like charity, covers a multitude of them, and so conceals them from our own censure and that of others. And if the great adversary of our souls can persuade us not to mind these little sins, he has almost all he cares for. For then he knows that we shall never be what he most of all hates, that is, great saints. 1. For such have ever shunned them with holy care. It has often been pointed out how Daniel might have prayed to God notwithstanding the king's decree, and yet never have incurred the awful peril of the lions' den, if be would only have shut his window when he prayed. But he must needs open it, and so, of course, he was seen. But he would not compromise with what he deemed bis duty to God even in so slight degree as this. And the martyrs, too. The Roman judges used perpetually to remind them how trifling was the concession asked for-just sprinkling a grain or two of incense on an altar, that was all. "Now, if men have been able to perceive so much of sin in little transgressions, that they would bear inconceivable tortures. rather than commit them, must there not be something dreadful after all in these little sins?" If we would have fellowship with the great saints of God, the eminent and true disciples of our Lord, we must give no quarter to these so-called trifling sins. They did not, or they would not have been what they were. 2. .And the little foxes grow into great ones. Has not the indulgence in one glass of intoxicating liquor often led on to the liking for two, and that to the taking of three, and that bas been followed by the man's becoming a drunkard and a sot? " Trem blez, tyrans ; nous grandirons l • was the shout of the young French lads who, drilled and dressed as soldiers, marched, in the days of the Revolution, through many a town and village in France. They bade the tyrants that oppressed their nation tremble, because they, though but little lads now, would one day be grown up into men. And might not our souls be well made to tremble as they contemplate one of these little sins ? for it, too, will grow up, and then will be no longer little, but great and strong. Scarcely more surely does the boy grow into the man than does a little sin tolerated grow into a great one. It is one of the ways of burglars, in effecting an entrance into a house, to attack a small window not nearly large enough to admit a man. But they bring a boy with them, and him they thrust through, and he then undoes larger windows or doors, and so the men enter too, Yes, my brother, if you are allowing yourself in what you are pleased to call a little sin,, it may be but the boy getting in at the window who will let in the greater thieves as soon as he is sarely in himself. Let us remember that. 3 . .And how these little sins multiply themselves I Great sins are rare. Tremendous transgressions we are guilty of but now and then-but once iu our lifetime, it may be; or God's grace may always keep us "innocent from the great transgression;" we trust it will. But these little ones-they are like the myriad insects in our gardens. How they swarm! The more minute they are the more tboy multiply, until they devour everything if they be let alone. They never come singly, but in troops. And so is it with these little sins that are like them. A mau will think it but a trifle if he utter a profane expression, he counts it a very small matter; but it soon comes to pass that he can hardly open bis mouth anywhere or anywben without some miserable profanity dropping from it. A little temper may come to mean an explosion half a dozen times a day, until it is said of the man that he is al ways in a temper. '!'hat grent Zuyder Zee, on which Amst~nfam is built, was once a fair fertile land covered with farms, villages, and hamlets; a strong embankment shut it off from the Northern Sea. But to.at embankment had, no doubt, 80 THE SONG OF sotoMON. tent. u. 1-17.·