the very first symptoms of sloth and slumber. Before you fall asleep you will doze and nod your head.

Depend on this, if you are of the family of God and fall asleep, chastisement, and blows, and reproof, and rebukes, in providence and grace, will be the remedy employed to recover you. Your condition, at last, may be (through your own unwatchfulness and sloth) that of one only just saved-saved as by fire!

7. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.

8. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love.

This verse continues an account of the chastisement of the slumbering, but now most anxious and unhappy soul.

The search now after the beloved is much more painful and wearisome. When gentle chastisements do not arouse "I will smite," saith the Lord," even unto sickness." He who chastised David through the instrumentality of Shimei,' and Absalom his son, doubtless oftentimes permits evil men, blind and

1. Sam. ii. 16.

cruel "watchmen," to have pre-eminence in His Church on earth, and in its several congregations, who evil-intreat the anxious and distressed followers of the Lord, and mis-apply the Word; severely administering reproof and reproachful upbraidings, when they ought to pour in the balm of consolation, being "eyes to the blind and feet to the lame."

They "make the hearts of the righteous sad, whom the Lord hath not made sad ;" 1 "discouraging those who ought to be encouraged, and talking to the grief of those whom God has wounded."2

Under such a dispensation, the soul of the enquiring desciple, "faint, yet pursuing," despairs not of finding Him, who, though for awhile He hideth himself, is yet not far from His Church. She is represented here as charging her acquaintance to tell her Lord how her " soul was sick of love!"

She complains not of the ill-treatment she had met with. She felt how much she deserved it. Her feelings are too intense to think of anything or any one save her absent Lord, "I charge you," says she, "tell Him," though I have been so foolish, so lukewarm, so slothful, that I opened not when He waited so patiently at the door of my heart; "tell Him (and He knoweth all things) that I love him still, yea "my soul is sick of love."

1. Ezk. xiii. 22.

2. Psm. lix. 26.

9. What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? what is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?

10. My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

11.

His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy and black as a raven.

12. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.

13.

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

14. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl : his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

15. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, encellent as the cedars.

16. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

The "daughters of Jerusalem" cannot understand the intense sorrow and anxious inquiry of a soul seeking after an absent Christ. They cannot appreciate either His presence or absence. They cannot sympathise in the conflicts and trials of the Believer. With kind and good-natured words, they ask who

her" beloved is," and, unconscious of His true excellencies, inquire concerning Him what there is, either in His person or character, so engaging as to make her so anxious to find him.

In reply, the Church draws a full portrait of Him.

Her description is in the most glowing and admirable language-incomparable and comprehensive! But who can, in suitable language, set forth His beauty; who, while he has everything in Him most beautiful and most admirable ("white" in His glory, as God; "ruddy," in His humiliation as God-man) has also that loveliness in him which is found in none other; for He is "fairer than the children of men," "higher than the kings of the earth; " a "standard-bearer," yea, the "chiefest," the tallest, and the most comely " among ten thousand."

Where is the "pen of the ready writer," where the tongue of man or the trumpets of angels, that can befittingly set forth the praises of Jesus, "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person?"2 We must confess that it is high above us, we cannot attain unto it. We must not value His beauty so little or undervalue it so much as to think it at all possible to sketch the portrait, much less fill up the picture of the beauty and glory of the Church's Bridegroom.

The Church mentions ten differerent particulars, which are identical with the description given by St. John in the Book of Revelations.

The scope of both passages is the same- -to set forth in language, dictated by the Spirit of God, the superlative glory, grace, and excellence of Jesus. I confess I am as unable, as I am unworthy to attempt, even to copy this portrait of my Lord.

May the writer and the reader be enabled by the Spirit, so to gaze on the mystic beauty of Jesus. —be so enabled to see His excellencies, that beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, they may be changed into the same image here, and behold Jesus as He is, hereafter.'

"2

May we grow increasingly familiar with His features, character, and grace. May our souls be so ravished with His love, that we may "hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Not fearing to confess Him as ours, while we declare His excellencies to others-" This is my Beloved, and this is my friend."

1. John iii. 2.

2. Heb. x. 23.