Morning, August 7
Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings
Song of Solomon 1:4
"The upright love thee"
Song of Solomon 1:4
Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection than they dare to give to
any other being. They would sooner lose father and mother than part
with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts with a loose hand, but they
carry him fast locked in their bosoms. They voluntarily deny themselves
for his sake, but they are not to be driven to deny him. It is scant
love which the fire of persecution can dry up; the true believer's love
is a deeper stream than this. Men have laboured to divide the faithful
from their Master, but their attempts have been fruitless in every age.
Neither crowns of honour, nor frowns of anger, have untied this more
than Gordian knot. This is no every-day attachment which the world's
power may at length dissolve. Neither man nor devil have found a key
which opens this lock. Never has the craft of Satan been more at fault
than when he has exercised it in seeking to rend in sunder this union
of two divinely welded hearts. It is written, and nothing can blot out
the sentence, "The upright love thee." The intensity of the love of the
upright, however, is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by
what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love
enough. Would that our hearts were capable of holding more, and
reaching further. Like Samuel Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as
much love as would go round about the earth, and over heaven--yea, the
heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds--that I might let all out
upon fair, fair, only fair Christ." Alas! our longest reach is but a
span of love, and our affection is but as a drop of a bucket compared
with his deserts. Measure our love by our intentions, and it is high
indeed; 'tis thus, we trust, our Lord doth judge of it. Oh, that we
could give all the love in all hearts in one great mass, a gathering
together of all loves to him who is altogether lovely!