The Pulpit Commentary — Song of Songs — Section 197

grncious promises to the penitent sinner. He "will not despise the broken and the contrite heart," "If the wicked will tum from all his sins that he bath committed, nnd keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely Ii ve, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that' he hath done he shall Jive." We th~ak God for these gracious words. If we have been called at the sixth or at the eleventh hour, it is enough to fill us with adoring gratitude; we wonder, as we look back upon the past, that God bore with us so long in our sin and unbelief; we thank him with all our heart for his long-suffering mercy. But when we remem- ber that sin and that unbelief, we cannot but long that we had given to God those lost and wasted years; that we had remembered our Creator in the days of our youth, and not grieved the Holy Spirit of God by so many transgressions, so much coldness and hardness of heart. 2. That she had brought him into her mother's house. Those lost years involved the loss of many opportunities of doing good to others. The bride, bad she known the bridegroom in early youth, would have brought him, she says, into her mother's house. There (she adds in what seems to be the best reading) "thou shouldest instruct me." How much good we might have done in our families, among our friends, if we had given our earliest years to God, if we had lived then as in his presence, and had carried the consciousness of that presence, with all the feelings of awe and reverence and love which attend it, always with us in our family life, in our dealings with relations and friends; if we bad given him of our best, and willingly offered up for bis service all that we most prized and valued, how much calmer, holier, happier, our life would have been I For be would have instructed us. He bids us learn of him. He is the great Teacher, the Master. "All thy children," be says, "shall be taught of the Lord: and great shall be the peace of thy children" (Isa. liv.13). 3. The bride repeats tlie aspirations of eh. ii. 7. If we bad listened to that instruction from the time when we were first made his disciples, if we had given him from the beginning that for which be thirsted-our affections, our heart's love-then he would now be wholly ours; "his left band should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me." That blessed union with the Saviour, growing ever nearer and closer, is the object of the deepest longings of the Christian soul. We think sometimes that if only we had always loved him and walked with him, our walk now might be very close with God; we might have attained to that calm aud serene trustfulness which is the privilege of hie saints; we might have found rest for our souls in the embracti of his holy love. But though we have greatly sinned, and have lost much through past neglect and unbelief, yet even now that blessed rest is not beyond our grasp. It was to Mary Magdalene, out of whom the Lord had cast seven devils, that those words were said. which seemed at first severe and forbidding, but really involved the promise of a holier union, "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto my Father." She was about to embrace his feet, to cling to the human form of him who bad done such great things for her. 'l'he Lord implies a promise of a better, spiritual communion. When he had ascended into heaven, when he had sent down the blessed Spirit that he might abide for ever with his Church, then the believing soul might touch him with the touch of faith; might cling to him with a holier, a more blessed embrace; then he would be with us all the days, guiding, strengthening, comforting, his left hand under our bead to support us when we seem to be ready to fall, his right hand embracing us to shield us from all evil, to assure us of his love. 4. The thrice- repeated charge to the daughters of Jerusalem. The bride's longings for the tokens of the bridegroom's love again arouse her feelings of maidenly reserve : as in eh. ii. 7 anJ. iii. 6, she bids her virgin-friends not to stir up or awaken love uutil it please to manifest itself. 'l'he Christian's aspirations after the abiding presence of God arouse in him feelings of reverential awe. He will remember the Lord's caution, "Touch me not;" he will avoid expressions of love which savour too much of merely human tenderness; he will shrink instinctively from any approach to familiarity; he will remombcr that the Lord Jesus is the Word of God, the King, the Judge of all; he will be reverent in all his approaches to the Saviour; he will endeavour to instil reverence into those around him by example, by tone, by manner, by word. We must wait ou the Lord until ho pleases to manifest himself; we must not be impatient; we must learn to soy with the psalmist, "Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and why a.r~  iSS THE SONG OF SOLOMON. tcrr. v11I. 1-H,