Song of Solomon 2

We have been told that the Song of Solomon is a piece of secular literature. That is not the judgment of unfriendly critics, but the judgment of the most pious and evangelical minds. What is the literature which is called secular? We have not dismissed the case when the word "secular" has been employed in designating the literature which is before us. The word secular itself must be defined. We may be too apt to divide all things into sacred and profane. Men have actually divided history so. In the olden times there were not wanting men who spoke of certain kinds of history as "profane." They did not mean in any sense indicating wickedness, but as contradistinguishing a kind of history from the history which is found in the Bible, and which on account of its being in the Bible is called sacred. What, then, is secular literature? Should we call stones, wood, iron, glass, secular substances? Let us allow that they might be so denominated. But may they not all be gathered up, and by pious ability be shaped into a sanctuary? then the very materials we once regarded as in some sense secular or profane become sacred, hallowed, separate for holy uses. It may be the same with literature that is called secular. The Song of Songs may be but a love poem—so we have already ventured to describe it; but may it not have further meanings than the poet himself saw? Do we always know what will become of the buildings we put up, the programmes we suggest, the courses of life or policy we indicate? Suppose we turn the Song of Songs into a riddle, and ask for an answer in personality? The riddle should be, Given all this elaborate and glowing description, to find out who is meant by it? All history is open for the suggestion of an answer. Who can find a man who will fitly clothe himself with all this parable, and wear it like an appropriate robe, and who having assumed it will at once indicate his right to it, and have that claim confirmed by universal consent? When we come into the Scriptures we should come with one cry, namely, Sirs, we would see Jesus! We shall know him when we see him; there is no mistaking that identity; even those who most nearly approach him stand away at an infinite distance when he himself comes forth in visible and palpable disclosure. Whilst he is away there are men who might simulate his presence; they might paint themselves into a high beauty, and adorn themselves with many rich robes, and might so far cause us to believe that they were what they professed to be—the very Christ of God. But when he comes it will be as when the sun comes after we have trimmed our artificial lights, and called them the glory of day: they look well; they almost seem to fit the occasion, they just lay themselves over the darkness and melt it away; but when the sun comes, rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, the first thing he does is to put out all artificial rivalry, to drive the darkness away, so that we can see it fleeing like a thing that is afraid; there is no mistaking the identity and the royalty of the sun. If you will suggest any historical character who can put on this robe, and wear it as if he had a right to it, do so; then Jesus Christ shall come in and assume the garment; then let men say to whom the robe belongs. We do not force this Song of Songs into unmeant uses or unholy uses when we ask how far it reveals in anticipation the Son of God.

Let us look at some of the features here indicated with a master's hand.

In this chapter there is given to Christ an undisputed preeminence in beauty and fruitfulness. And the Church is magnified by Christ into an equivalent beauty. Sometimes we can hardly tell whether it is the Church or Christ that is described, for the two seem to become interchangeable and one: "My beloved is mine, and I am his," and it is impossible to say with regard to the distribution of beauty which belongs to the one and which belongs to the other. The bride is made meet for the bridegroom. But let us take this description of beauty as referring to Christ; then see how preeminent it is. "As the lily among thorns" (Song of Solomon 2:2). Is that a description of the Church? So let it be. Meanwhile, it is also descriptive of the Church's Redeemer and King. "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood" (Song of Solomon 2:3). These beautiful things put all rivalry far away. Not, as the lily among roses, as the lily among other flowers nearly as beautiful; but, "as the lily among thorns,"—the point is in the contrast. There is no approach to equality, no claim for approximation; the whole stress of the thought is in its strong and powerful contrast. "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood"—the trees that bear no fruit, the trees that are little but timber. Not our apple tree, for our apple tree is not known in the land in which this song was written, but another kind of tree—the apricot, the quince, the tree that spread itself far and wide, and seemed to be enamelled with living gold; such a tree as perhaps western and northern eyes never gazed upon. What we have to do, therefore, is to point out the preeminence of beauty; not only beauty, but supreme beauty; not only supreme beauty as beautiful to the eye, but ideal beauty, that leaves even the imagination far behind. This is the conception we are to form of Christ: all other flowers are but thorns, all other trees are withered in every branch; Jesus Christ stands out, the one loveliness, the one satisfaction. All this might be mere poetry, or sentiment, or dream. We have, therefore, to refer the matter to Christ himself. Does Jesus Christ anywhere even seem to confirm this preeminence of beauty, fascination, and claim? If he nowhere reters to any such preeminence of beauty and power, then let the Song of Songs be reckoned among the poetries of the past, and let it fall into desuetude. But what does Jesus Christ himself say? If he does not sing the song, does he at any point confirm the images or figures by which he is represented in this sweetest of all music? Hear him: "I am the Vine." He is a tree then—tree of life; he supplies the branches; the branches are nothing without him: "Without me," saith the vine, "without me ye can do nothing." Truly, there is a sound of preeminence in that claim. He is not second on the list of greatness who has so asserted himself. Hear him again: "I am the Light of the world." Is that not a claim to preeminence? Not, I am one of the lights of the world; not, I am one of the stars of heaven; not, I am one of a multitude, and you ought to be indebted to us all: but simply, sternly magnificent in the austerity of the figure, "I am the Light of the world." So, then, she who sang this love-song in the eastern land has some authority for assigning to her love preeminence, kingship, in the very words of Christ himself. Hear him again: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Is Christ, then, one of a multitude? does he take his place modestly amongst all the claimants to human attention and confidence, and say, You behold us all, a galaxy of glory, of wit, of intellectual splendour, and philosophic capacity,—take which of us seems best to suit the occasion? Be he whom he may, he stands out at the head, and says: Discipleship means hatred of all other claims, absorption in my personality, undivided and immutable consecration to my service. Did Christ then mean to pour contempt upon father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister? No; the whole point of his argument is in the contrast which he seeks to establish as between himself and all other creatures. So when the singer of this song speaks of her love "as the apple tree among the trees of the wood," she is confirmed so far by the authority of Jesus Christ, who claims that all love should be concentrated upon himself, and that therefore all other and minor love should be sanctified and ennobled, and share the elevation of the first dominating passion. Hear him once more: "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers." That is enough to establish his claim to preeminence. Whether that claim was just or unjust, there it is. He would stand in solitary shepherdliness: "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.... No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." This is not murder, it is sacrifice.

Keeping, therefore, strictly and critically to the mere literature of the question, whatever is claimed in the Song of Solomon for an anticipated and ideal Christ was asserted in actual words by the historical Christ himself: "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star": "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." "That in all things," saith the apostle, "he might have the preeminence." So far there is no forcing of the song into undue uses by finding in it the preeminent and ideal personality of Christ.

In this chapter protection and satisfaction are ascribed to Christ. "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste" (Song of Solomon 2:3). The quince has a great shadow. The very shadow of that fruit-tree is a house, a place of protection and rest and sweet quietude. Can we be wrong in ascribing protection and satisfaction to Jesus Christ? Does he himself anywhere offer these privileges? Does the poet here transcend the occasion, and resort to a species of metaphor which can have no solid equivalent in history? Let us hear Christ himself. Observe what the question is; it is purely one of protection and satisfaction—the protection indicated by the shadow, and the satisfaction being indicated by the fruit which "was sweet to my taste." What hast thou to offer, thou Son of God? Thou hast not where to lay thine head; what gift can be in thine empty hand? Hear the Saviour: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." These words seem to fall like chiming bells into the music of the ancient song. "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." Lord, every man thirsts, every man's life is like a burning fever; the rivers cannot quench that fire: canst thou quench it? "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." This is poetry turned to history; the history will again become poetry, and some day we shall hardly know which is the history and which is the poetry: the poetry will be so lofty in its claim, and the history will be so musical in its gospels, that he will have a most inspired ear who can tell where the poetry ceases and the history begins, or contrariwise. Enough, however, has been quoted to show that Jesus Christ offers protection and satisfaction to all who come unto him. Who has not felt a sense of satisfaction and protection in being safe in the arms of Jesus? Who has not felt the difference in blessedness between Christ's words and all other? They have vindicated themselves. One taste that the Lord is gracious hath put away from the palate the memory of every other feast. This point can be testified to by living witnesses. Christians are not men who have had experience in one direction only; they have sat at many tables; they have been the guests of the devil; they have gone with their vessels from spring to spring that they might taste many waters; and now, having been in a far country, and returned home, and tasted the sweetness of Christ's doctrine and promises, they say, Lord, ever more give us this bread, this water: there is none like it; it fills the soul with satisfaction. Men have gone mad with delight under the consciousness of Christ's presence—not mad in the sense of mental unbalancing, but in the sense of rapture, ecstasy, joy unutterable, unspeakable, and full of glory. This has been the experience of the most solid intellects amongst men. It has taken a long time to set them on fire, but once in a glow they have burned up the rivers that were meant to quench them. Let Christians declare their testimony, and not be ashamed of the protection and satisfaction they have enjoyed at the hands of their master and Lord.

Another point would seem to be that Christ is spoken of as always coming: "The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills" (Song of Solomon 2:8). Jesus Christ will come again. He has but taken his journey into a far country. "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." He was always speaking of his own coming. His going away seemed to be a kind of returning. He said: I go for your sakes: "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you": "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself": "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him": "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh": he will come as a thief in the night—suddenly, almost unexpectedly: "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." That is the only mood in which we can truly live. Whilst we live in a historical Christ, we also live in a Christ that is yet to complete his advent by another descent. Various theories about that descent have been formed. There is a physical or personal coming; there is another kind of coming—to my own mind richer, larger, and truer—the continual coming of Christ, in new ideas, new impressions, the awakening of higher aspirations, the satisfaction of the soul's hunger; and that wondrous coming which men call Death. Think not of your Beloved as away in any sense of distance that signifies separation, coldness, and cessation of fellowship: he is away preparing for us; he will come again. He comes every day to the soul that waits for him. He can so come to the spirit that any bodily coming would be held in contempt in comparison; he can so fill the heart, and satisfy and gladden it, that any vision of his personality by the bodily eyes would be unworthy of the occasion. He enlarges our manhood, he clears our spiritual horizon; he gives us to feel that he can come better spiritually than physically and literally. At the same time, let us hold any theory of Christ's coming we please which draws us towards him, which impels us to duty and sacrifice, which creates in us a larger manhood and a completer beneficence; but whatever the coming may be there must be in it a spiritual realisation transcending all language in its expression, and all sensuous representation as to its grandeur and value.

Then Christ is associated in this song with springtide, light, song, gladness: "My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, and the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away" (Song of Solomon 2:10-13). That is not mere passion of words. There is a sense in which the soul feels every touch of that appeal. When Christ comes the spring comes. Say not the coming of Christ is the coming of winter. If your Christianity has been associated with frost and snow and ice, cold north-easterly blasts, then know ye that some false Christ has laid hold of your duped souls. Where Christ is there is spring, music, festival, wine of heaven, dancing and joy fit for the city of jasper walls. How stands the case with us, then? Are we orphans? are we desolate wanderers? are we without an ideal preeminence? are we without a sense of protection and satisfaction? Or have we in our hearts an assurance that Christ is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, all and in all? Are we assured that being with us he will bring springtide into the soul, we shall forget all the sorrow, all the night, all the cold, and in one warm gleam of his presence shall find and feel the beginning of eternal summer? Oh, poor life of man, thou needest some comfort! Life feels so keenly the wintry wind. Then at its very festival there is a deep pit called the grave, in which no flower grows, in which no fair thing can ever live. Poor life, thou needest some comfort; thou art poisoned by the springs thou didst think would quench thy thirst; and when thou hast got a little light, and art sheltering it by thine hand, lo! a rough wind blows it out, and leaves the darkness darker still: the children go astray, and friends are like broken staves, and the stream that was coming to quench thy thirst recedes and mocks thee like a living enemy. Oh, poor life! truly thou dost need comfort. Thy comfort is in Christ. He knows the meaning of pain, shame, poverty, desolation, homelessness; he has been buffeted and forsaken; there is no region of poverty he has not known, there is no hardship he has not undergone; his face is marred more than the face of any man; yet see how through the scars there kindles a strange beauty as of hidden light, and see how the pierced hand is put out helpfully, scattering its infinite blessings upon all the misery and pain and necessity of the times. Oh, poor, poor lost one! hast thou not thought of all this? hast thou not thought of Christ? Is it not a great thing that man should be so constituted that he must be drawn by ideals infinite in their sublimity and excellence? Is it not much to the credit even of human nature that nothing can really satisfy but that which is infinitely greater than itself—that the leverage which moves humanity must be from an eternal sanctuary? God recognises in our poverty a proof of our greatness. Were we less the earth might satisfy us; were ours the mere hunger of the body the meanest shrub might find us bread enough: it is because we are men, made in the image and likeness of God, lost divinities, that nothing can appease our hunger but the Tree of Life, nothing quench our thirst but the river of God. Have no mean conceptions of Christ. Do not cause him to be represented by unworthy similitudes. Wherever you hear the highest music, say, That would best express my love of Christ. You call a trumpet a secular instrument: a man may lift up the brazen thing and say, This is secular, this is but perishable material. So it is to him, because he himself is secular, he himself has not realised the passion of immortality. Let another kind of man seize the same instrument, even after it has been filled with unworthy music, and he will cleanse its passages by a new breath, and through it will blow a blast worthy of jubilee, not unworthy of heaven.

Sowing and Reaping

Song of Solomon 2 and Song of Solomon 3

There is something very remarkable in the sweet words, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away" (Song of Solomon 2:13). Wherever we find these words we should be gratified with their music, their simplicity, their human tenderness. When we apply them to Jesus Christ they are invested with new and large significance. Jesus Christ is always calling his Church away to some higher altitude, to some greener pasture, or by some quieter stream. The Church is always under inspiration. This is not the time for rest, finality; this is the time for marching, advancing, learning, putting into practice what we learn, and obeying the voice of one unseen but well known, calling us to go forward, though we are apparently going into thick darkness and into troubled seas. When did Jesus Christ ever say, You have made all the progress you can make: sit down and rest evermore; for there is nothing more that can be learned; at least, there is nothing more for you to acquire? That is not the voice of Jesus. We should contradict any one instantly and strongly who made the declaration that Jesus Christ had said, Men have now come to the end of their learning and their beneficence. Blessed is he who hears his Lord always saying, Arise, come away: you have not seen all yet; the real beauty is yet to be shown, the great harvest-field has yet to be reaped; you have hardly begun to live. Arise, come away, halt not, fear not; I have many more things to tell thee, and when thou art able to bear them thou shalt hear them one by one. It is a cheerful voice, and a voice that cheers. It is full of vivacity—not the sharpness or shrillness that merely excites and arouses, but the deep music that expresses joy, and that always promises a larger blessing as yet in store. When we sit down, and say, This is the end; when we dismiss our energy; when we cease to put on our strength,—then know that if we were once temples of God we have been forsaken by the living One. We must prove our Christianity by our progress; our love of Christ by understanding the present day, the immediate times, and responding to contemporaneous demands with cheerful alacrity and encouraging abundance: to-morrow will be an unread book; we must peruse it with the learning we have acquired to-day. Every morning brings with it some message from Christ, and that message is always an inspiring one, calling us to some new duty, some humble task, some great endeavour, some painful sacrifice.

Is it then all sunshine? Do we leave behind us all discipline? or is there a voice of warning to be attended to? Let us read these words: "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: tor our vines have tender grapes" (Song of Solomon 2:15). There is nothing fanciful in regarding these "foxes" and "little foxes" as representing spiritual enemies or difficulties peculiar to our situation and capacity. The little foxes spoil the vines, the grapes. What are these little foxes? Which of us is guilty of some great heresy? who can stand up and say he belongs to the party of the great and violent apostasy? who will rank himself with those who openly blaspheme against heaven? Not a man. Who will charge himself with glaring crimes, with obvious and intentional rebellion against God? We do not err in that direction. These would indeed be great foxes, great displays of depravity—a depravity that overleaps itself by its very extravagance and vulgarity. We need have little fear of ourselves along that line; we have lived too long and seen too much to commit ourselves to such gross profanity. But what of the little foxes—the irregularities, the nameless indulgences, the self-consideration, the endless omissions? Who makes some great speech infamous in its conception and its rhetoric? No man at all connected with the sanctuary of God. But what about the little bitter speeches that spoil family communion, the petty criticisms, the malignant, half-concealed allusions, the reminiscences that are all sting, the odd sentences that give the hearer heartache all day? and what of concealed selfishness—that worst kind of all, that gloves its hand, that cloaks its personality, that apes the attitude and speech of generosity; a calculated selfishness that touches and retires, that asks as if not asking, that claims as if not asserting, but persistently pursues its own policy and its own advantage? There, if the question be pressed severely, we shall fall at one stroke, and be taken captive instantly and completely.

Have we got rid of the larger evils? Then attention must be directed to what are known as minor evils—the little foxes, the little blotches upon the character, the small aberrations that require an eye of spiritual criticism to see that they are aberrations at all. We can draw a rough circle with a practised hand, but lay the compass upon it, and then see how defective it is when brought under the judgment of a true geometry. So we may in life do many things tolerably well, wonderfully well, so well as to attract attention and elicit commendation, but when the compasses of the sanctuary are laid upon our circles, the best of them is but a rough polygon; it is no circle at all. Yet to the eye it looks quite right. But what is the eye of the body? What can it see? What can it judge? It is dependent upon atmosphere and distance, and at the very best it is a lame judge of straight lines or circular lines. We must be judged by the spirit of the sanctuary, by the genius of the altar, by the Holy Ghost, and then so judged there is fire enough in the criticism to burn us as with the scorching of hell.

"Our vines have tender grapes." In our life there are budding thoughts. Do we know what we do when we destroy a blossom? Who can measure the disaster? Who can compute the loss? It is in blossoming and budding time that we have to take great care: then the frost tells heavily, then the cold wind is very cruel, and the toiling insect seems to carry everything before it. So many of us have been cruelly used at budding time. We have had beautiful blossoms of character. Who cannot remember these? Once we nearly prayed; at one time men took notice of us that there was a new element in our character, and they expected us to become religious; but some little fox destroyed the tender grape, or some great enmity was discovered, and it fell upon us like a cold wind; some senior professor snubbed us, was unkind to us, did not understand us, so the blossom was taken away, and where the blossom is destroyed what fruit can there be? Take care of first impressions, little budding thoughts, tender blossoms of moral aspiration, for in these are the beginnings of good character. Take care of the little things, the apparent trifles; the great main lines of character may be left to other influences and to broader culture. So then if we are called away to sunny places, to paradises, to fruitful gardens, there is difficulty, there is danger, and there is a need of discipline.

Again in chapter Song of Solomon 3:8 we have the same idea—"Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night." Who expected to find these words in a love-song? We thought we had passed all the hard books of Scripture, and had now come into a garden of delights, a very paradise of love; yet here are military words. Who can escape the military and disciplinary part of life? To have a sword may be ornamental, to have a sword in the daytime may look well; but what of the sword never taken off, ready at night-time, ready for all the messengers of darkness? What about this aspect of life? Yet who does not know it? Who is not aware of the fact that he must never take his sword off night or day? Why not? Because of the unexpected visitations which distress our life, because of temptations which give no notice of their coming, because we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. That is why! Do we part with our sword? Do we say, Surely at night-time there can be no need for the sword, so we will lay it aside, and commit ourselves to rest, and to dream, and sweet converse? The enemy overhears us; the enemy knows who has the sword on and who has laid the sword away. He is a wise enemy—skilful, penetrating, sagacious, unslumbering; we cannot fight him in our own wit and skill and strength; we need all heaven's help to strike that foe fatally on the head. So whilst we have been enjoying the beauty of the song, its rare music, and have simply given ourselves up to the swinging rhythm of the singer, we must now obey the same inspiration, and if it was worth while to follow him when he spoke highly and sweetly concerning love and treasure and peace and joy, we must also obey him when he speaks of care and watchfulness and discipline. And as for this night-time, has God no care of it? Are there any Christian references to night-time in the New Testament? "At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh": "The Son of man will come as a thief in the night." Has not God made use of the night-time? When did the song which we associate with the gospel make itself heard by the sons of men? At midnight there was an angel, and with the angel a great host, and the song sung in that star-time was, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." Do not think, therefore, that God has no sanctuary in the darkness; do not suppose that God retires from the providence of life at sundown, and takes no heed of it until the sun rises again. If the enemy is abroad at night so is God; he neither slumbers nor sleeps; he gives no rest to his eyelids. The darkness and the light are both alike unto thee, thou living, all-seeing God. So we must keep the two sides of the case clearly before us. The enemy seems to rule the night, but he does not in reality. It would sometimes appear as if the field of darkness were left wholly to the great foe: not one single cloud of it but is under the dominion and hand and care and love of God. "Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne." He comes down upon the clouds; the clouds are the dust of his feet. Let no man, therefore, imagine that night indicates God's having forsaken the earth; it indicates rather the curtaining-in of the earth when it lies down to sleep in his infinite arms.

Notice another beautiful expression—"Behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him" (Song of Solomon 3:11). Does that always mean something beautiful? Not always, as history has abundantly and painfully testified. Mothers have given crowns they had no right to give. Bad women have promised kingdoms to their husbands, and have succeeded in conferring those kingdoms upon them without title that could be justified, without one tittle of righteousness marking the whole process. Yet who has such right to give a crown to a son as a mother? What other crown is worth having? Behold, King Solomon, with the crown that his mother crowned him with. The image is beautiful, instructive, encouraging. What chances the mother has! she is always near; she sees when the gate of the mind is ajar, and she can enter in, as it were, stealthily, with all the quietness and tenderness of patient love. How soon she can begin! No other workman can be upon the ground so early as the mother. What questions are put to her! What answers she may return! Yet how soon is she forgotten! Who remembers Bath-sheba except in connection with shame? Surely it required some one to speak of her in connection with the coronation of her son. Life is a mixed quantity: we are bad, yet sometimes we pray; we sin much, yet to-morrow we may touch the divine arm, and see the King in his beauty; now scorched with hell, now blessed and calmed with all heaven's peace. True, we could go back and find out painful things in every history; but who cares to do this mean work? Who would live in such criticism? Has the man, the woman, ever done any beautiful thing, spoken any sweet word, gone out in sacrifice? has he, has she, been patient; thoughtful, unselfish, forgiving? In the name of reason, conscience, righteousness, let us magnify these instances, and allow all other matters to fall away into forgetfulness.

"The crown wherewith his mother crowned him" (Song of Solomon 3:11)—the crown of love of truth, love of honour, love of service; other crowns are trivial, other crowns are tinsel. The great Napoleon once said, "Who rocks the cradle rules the world." When that is believed in all the scope of its significance we shall see reformation without injustice, revolution without violence, the quiet dawn which always typifies the greatest of renewals and the greatest of beginnings. When Plato saw a child do wrong he went instantly and rebuked the parent. Truly he was a wise philosopher! Plato did not speak to the child; he did not imagine the child had invented some new depravity; he did not say, Thou art a genius in evil, thou hast found out quite a novel wickedness, and therefore I must address thee in thy personality. Without heeding the child he went and rebuked the parent. What a grasp of true wisdom he had! what a conception of the mystery of heredity! He was right. How can the parent draw himself up with pharisaic pride and rebuke the child? The child is but the man reduplicated; the child owes its birth to the man who rebukes him. Is your child a drunkard? So were you, or, if not you, the one behind you. This child of yours never invented the game of intemperance: he is not a discoverer in the art of wickedness. But you say you never were a drunkard? Wait. Be not quite so sure of that. Not perhaps in the open, obvious, vulgar sense of the term; but recall what you have done in that way, how you accustomed yourself to almost miracles in the way of drinking and self-indulgence. You did it little by little; the process did not seem to tell upon you; or there were circumstances in your case which mitigated the effect of the poison as to the public eye and as to your own consciousness, but all the while the mischief went on, and it comes up in that son who gives you heartache day by day. Are your children incapable, nervous, irritable, difficult to manage and govern? Blame yourselves. You wasted your constitution in your youth. The child inherits what you laid up. Every nervous fit is something you ought to be sorry for, and something for which you ought to apologise to the child. There are many murders committed without any blood being shed. When will people know that every thought they think tells upon the next generation: that every bad thought that passes through the brain repeats itself in the coming time? When will men remember that they cannot stay out late at night doing evil things without the black seed coming up in a black harvest? You look at the child and say you are surprised, for you began this practice and that practice when you were in your teens; if it is a poison, it is a very slow poison, for it has had no effect upon you. Supposing that you have been rough enough, hard enough, to bear the process yourself, yet see the full effect of the thing in those who have come after you: the process does not end with you; it only began mayhap in your instance: you must follow it out to your children, and if you see them incapable, nervous, irritable, worldly, drunken, beastly, do not pull yourself up in some haughty pharisaic attitude and begin to lecture them—fall down in the dust, and say, God be merciful to me a sinner: I have murdered children! Blessed be God, the law tells also upon the other side. Every noble thought you think has an effect upon the little child. Every generous deed you did comes up in beauty on that child's sweet face; the child never would have had such a visage but for your beneficence, pureness, religiousness; if you had prayed less the child's countenance would have been less suggestive of the highest significance. "The way of the Lord is equal." If we have done evil, evil we shall reap; if we have done good, our harvest shall be an abundance of good in return: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." You have it not in your power, it may be, to leave your child gold. Thank God for the child that has little gold left. It is almost certain temptation; it is almost probable ruin. Bless God that the little child has to count its fingers, and see how many it has which it can employ as instruments of honest labour. But you can leave your child a beautiful example; you can so live that the child will be able to say, I never knew him do a mean thing; I never knew her carried away with vanity and folly; I have always known both the old folks sweet, kind, patient, longsuffering: God bless them. Epitaph they may have none in the churchyard, but they have an epitaph written upon the tablets of my heart. To work for such a speech is task enough for any angel.

One greater than Solomon is crowned. We read that on his head are many crowns. He deserves them all. He is Lord of all—

As for us, this is the rule: No cross, no crown; no sword, no sceptre; no storm, no calm. Thus a new view of the song comes before us. Hitherto we have been enjoying it as a piece of music; now we must listen to it as a law, a call to duty, a warning, and yet a promise. If we suffer with Christ we shall also reign with him. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." That is enough. We will think of the music, and think of the discipline; we will remember the beauty, and not forget all the service; we will think of the promise, and know that the promise lies on the farther side of the cross, and that they who bear the cross well shall wear the crown evermore.